The Religious Experience of the Roman People: From the Earliest Times to the Age of AugustusFowler, W. Warde (William Warde)
Religion
The Religious Experience of the Roman People: From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus
Fowler, W. Warde (William Warde)
Cults -- Rome; Rome -- Religion
11th and 15th January, and the Lemuria in May are on the 9th, 11th, and
13th; the Lucaria in July on 19th and 21st. In some months, too, _e.g._
August and December, perhaps also July and February, there seem to be
traces of an arrangement by which festivals which probably had some
connection with each other are thus arranged; _e.g._ in August six
festivals, all concerned in some way with the fruits of the earth and
the harvest, occur on the 17th, 19th, 21st, 23rd, 25th, and 27th. It has
recently been suggested[198] that these are arranged round one central
festival, which gives a kind of colouring to the others, as the
Volcanalia in August, the Saturnalia in December. But the reasons von
Domaszewski gives for the arrangement, and the further speculation that
where it does not occur we may find traces of an older system, as yet
unaffected by the so-called Pythagorean prejudice, do not seem to me
satisfactory. We may be content with the general principle as I have
stated it, and note that while religious duties _must_ be performed on
days of odd number, civil duties were not so restricted: the days
belonging to the gods, which were, so to speak, taboo days, were more
important than those belonging to men. There are, as I have said, but
two days marked in the large letters as festivals, which are on days of
even number, 24th February and 14th March, the Regifugium and the second
Equirria; and about these we know so little that it is almost useless to
speculate as to the reason for their exception from the rule. Two
others, 24th March and 24th May, were partly the property of the gods
and partly of men, and are marked QRCF (_quando rex comitiavit fas_);
but the sense in which they partially belonged to the gods is not the
same as in the case of sacrificial festivals.
This calendar thus shows obvious signs of both military and political
development; in other words, its witness to the religious experience of
the Romans proves that they had successfully adjusted the forms and
seasons of their worship to the processes of government at home and of
military service in the field. But the most conspicuous feature in it is
the testimony it bears to the agricultural habits of the people--to the
fact that agriculture and not trade, of which there is hardly a trace,
was the economic basis of their life. At the time when it was drawn up,
the Romans must have been able to subsist upon the _ager Romanus_,
though, as we shall see later on, it was probably not long before they
began commercial relations with other peoples; for their food, which was
almost entirely vegetarian, and their clothing, which was entirely of
wool and leather,[199] they depended on their crops, flocks, and herds;
and the perils to which these were liable remain for the State, as for
the farming household, the main subject of the propitiation of the gods,
the main object of their endeavours to keep themselves in right relation
with the Power manifest in the universe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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