The Religious Experience of the Roman People

The Religious Experience of the
Roman People, by

W. Warde Fowler This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no
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Title: The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest
Times to the Age of Augustus
Author: W. Warde Fowler
Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23349]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE AGE OF AUGUSTUS

THE GIFFORD LECTURES FOR 1909-10 DELIVERED IN
EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY
BY
W. WARDE FOWLER, M.A.
FELLOW AND LATE SUB-RECTOR OF LINCOLN COLLEGE,
OXFORD HON. D.LITT. UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
AUTHOR OF 'THE ROMAN FESTIVALS OF THE PERIOD OF
THE REPUBLIC,' ETC.
"Sanctos ausus recludere fontes"
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET,
LONDON 1911
TO PROFESSOR W.R. HARDIE AND MY MANY OTHER KIND
FRIENDS AND FRIENDLY HEARERS IN EDINBURGH

PREFACE
Lord Gifford in founding his lectureship directed that the lectures
should be public and popular, i.e. not restricted to members of a
University. Accordingly in lecturing I endeavoured to make myself
intelligible to a general audience by avoiding much technical
discussion and controversial matter, and by keeping to the plan of
describing in outline the development and decay of the religion of the
Roman City-state. And on the whole I have thought it better to keep to
this principle in publishing the lectures; they are printed for the most
part much as they were delivered, and without footnotes, but at the end
of each lecture students of the subject will find the notes referred to by
the numbers in the text, containing such further information or
discussion as has seemed desirable. My model in this method has been
the admirable lectures of Prof. Cumont on "les Religions Orientales
dans le Paganisme Romain."

I wish to make two remarks about the subject-matter of the lectures.
First, the idea running through them is that the primitive religious (or
magico-religious) instinct, which was the germ of the religion of the
historical Romans, was gradually atrophied by over-elaboration of
ritual, but showed itself again in strange forms from the period of the
Punic wars onwards. For this religious instinct I have used the Latin
word religio, as I have explained in the Transactions of the Third
International Congress for the History of Religions, vol. ii. p. 169 foll.
I am, however, well aware that some scholars take a different view of
the original meaning of this famous word, which has been much
discussed since I formed my plan of lecturing. But I do not think that
those who differ from me on this point will find that my general
argument is seriously affected one way or another by my use of the
word.
Secondly, while I have been at work on the lectures, the idea seems to
have been slowly gaining ground that the patrician religion of the early
City-state, which became so highly formalised, so clean and austere,
and eventually so political, was really the religion of an invading race,
like that of the Achaeans in Greece, engrafted on the religion of a
primitive and less civilised population. I have not definitely adopted
this idea; but I am inclined to think that a good deal of what I have said
in the earlier lectures may be found to support it. Once only, in Lecture
XVII., I have used it myself to support a hypothesis there advanced.
I have retained the familiar English spelling of certain divine names,
e.g. Jupiter (instead of Iuppiter), as less startling to British readers.
I wish to express my very deep obligations to the works of Prof.
Wissowa and Dr. J. G. Frazer, and also to Mr. R. R. Marett, who gave
me useful personal help in my second and third lectures. From Prof.
Wissowa and Dr. Frazer I have had the misfortune to differ on one or
two points; but "difference of opinion is the salt of life," as a great
scholar said to me not long ago. In reading the proofs I have had much
kind and valuable help from my Oxford friends Mr. Cyril Bailey and
Mr. A. S. L. Farquharson, who have read certain parts of the work, and
to whose suggestions I am greatly indebted. The whole has been read

through by my old pupil Mr. Hugh Parr, now of Clifton College, to
whom my best thanks are due for his timely discovery of many
misprints and awkward expressions. The loyalty and