11.  The vestals were bound by a vow of perpetual virginity, and a violation of this oath was cruelly punished.  The unfortunate offender was buried alive in a vault constructed beneath the Fo’rum by the elder Tarquin.  The terror of such a dreadful fate had the desired effect; there were only eighteen instances of incontinence among the vestals, during the space of a thousand years.

12.  The mixture of religion with civil polity, gave permanence and stability to the Roman institutions; notwithstanding all the changes and revolutions in the government the old forms were preserved; and thus, though the city was taken by Porsenna, and burned by the Gauls, the Roman constitution survived the ruin, and was again restored to its pristine vigour.

13.  The Romans always adopted the gods of the conquered nations, and, consequently, when their empire became very extensive, the number of deities was absurdly excessive, and the variety of religious worship perfectly ridiculous.  The rulers of the world wanted the taste and ingenuity of the lively Greeks, who accommodated every religious system to their own, and from some real or fancied resemblance, identified the gods of Olym’pus with other nations.  The Romans never used this process of assimilation, and, consequently, introduced so much confusion into their mythology, that philosophers rejected the entire system.  This circumstance greatly facilitated the progress of Christianity, whose beautiful simplicity furnished a powerful contrast to the confused and cumbrous mass of divinities, worshipped in the time of the emperors.

Questions for Examination.

1.  How did the religion of the Romans differ from that of the Greeks?

2.  Was the Roman religion connected with the government?

3.  How was the right of taking the Auspices abused?

4.  Who were the augurs?

5.  From what did the augurs take omens?

6.  What were the forms used in taking the auspices?

7.  Who were the aruspices?

8.  What other priests had the Romans?

9.  What was the duty of the vestal virgins?

10.  Did the vestals enjoy great privileges?

11.  How were the vestals punished for a breach of their vows?

12.  Why was the Roman constitution very permanent?

13.  Whence arose the confusion in the religious system of the Romans?

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] The reader will find an exceedingly interesting account of the deities peculiar to the Romans, in Mr. Keightley’s very valuable work on Mythology.

2:  The poet Ennius, who was of Grecian descent, ridiculed very successfully the Roman superstitions; the following fragment, translated by Dunlop, would, probably, have been punished as blasphemous in the first ages of the republic:—­