Religious Economy

But if Italy still possessed—­what had long been a mere antiquarian curiosity in Hellas—­a national religion, it was already visibly beginning to be ossified into theology.  The torpor creeping over faith is nowhere perhaps so distinctly apparent as in the alterations in the economy of divine service and of the priesthood.  The public service of the gods became not only more tedious, but above all more and more costly.  In 558 there was added to the three old colleges of the augurs, pontifices, and keepers of oracles, a fourth consisting of three “banquet-masters” (-tres viri epulones-), solely for the important purpose of superintending the banquets of the gods.  The priests, as well as the gods, were in fairness entitled to feast; new institutions, however, were not needed with that view, as every college applied itself with zeal and devotion to its convivial affairs.  The clerical banquets were accompanied by the claim of clerical immunities.  The priests even in times of grave embarrassment claimed the right of exemption from public burdens, and only after very troublesome controversy submitted to make payment of the taxes in arrear (558).  To the individual, as well as to the community, piety became a more and more costly article.  The custom of instituting endowments, and generally of undertaking permanent pecuniary obligations, for religious objects prevailed among the Romans in a manner similar to that of its prevalence in Roman Catholic countries at the present day.  These endowments—­particularly after they came to be regarded by the supreme spiritual and at the same time the supreme juristic authority in the state, the pontifices, as a real burden devolving -de jure- on every heir or other person acquiring the estate—­began to form an extremely oppressive charge on property; “inheritance without sacrificial obligation” was a proverbial saying among the Romans somewhat similar to our “rose without a thorn.”  The dedication of a tenth of their substance became so common, that twice every month a public entertainment was given from the proceeds in the Forum Boarium at Rome.  With the Oriental worship of the Mother of the Gods there was imported to Rome among other pious nuisances the practice, annually recurring on certain fixed days, of demanding penny-collections from house to house (-stipem cogere-).  Lastly, the subordinate class of priests and soothsayers, as was reasonable, rendered no service without being paid for it; and beyond doubt the Roman dramatist sketched from life, when in the curtain-conversation between husband and wife he represents the account for pious services as ranking with the accounts for the cook, the nurse, and other customary presents:—­

-Da mihi, vir,—­quod dem Quinquatribus Praecantrici, conjectrici, hariolae atquc haruspicae; Tum piatricem clementer non potest quin munerem.  Flagitium est, si nil mittetur, quo supercilio spicit.-

The Romans did not create a “God of gold,” as they had formerly created a “God of silver";(2) nevertheless he reigned in reality alike over the highest and lowest spheres of religious life.  The old pride of the Latin national religion—­the moderation of its economic demands—­was irrevocably gone.