Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius

d may become mere superstitions to the next. And, conversely, what for a time may be regarded as alien superstition, may in course of time become an accepted portion of th

nobles, and even the prince himself, were enthusiastic votaries of them.2279 The religion of Mithra, when it was confined to an obscure circle of slaves or freedmen at Osti

servile prostration. This craven fear of God fills the whole universe with spectres. It leaves no refuge whither the devil-worshipper can escape from the horrors which haunt him night and day. Whither can he flee from that awful presence? Sleep, which should give a respite from the cares of life, to his fevered mind, swarms with ghostly terrors.2282 And death, the last sleep, which should put a term to the ills of life, only unrolls before the superstitious votary an awful scene of rivers of fire and blackness of darkness, and sounds of punishment and unutterable woe.2283 To such a soul the festivals of ancestral religion lose all their s

w rampant was the evil in that age. Lucretius felt with the intensity of genius all the misery which perverted conceptions of the Divine nature had inflicted on human life.2286 But the force of Roman superstition had endlessly multiplied since the days of Lucretius. It was no longer the exaggeration of Roman awe at the lightning, the flight of birds, the entrails of a sacrificial victim, or anxious observance of the solemn words of ancestral formulae, every syllable of which had to be guarded from mutilation or omission. All the lands which had fallen to her sword were, in Plutarch's day, adding to the spiritual burden of Rome. If in some cases they enriched her rather slender spiritual heritage, they also multiplied the sources of supernatural terror. If in the mysteries of

he confusion and demoralisation of civil strife, but perhaps even more to the dangerous seductions of foreign superstitions.2293 Among the counsels of Maecenas to Augustus none is more earnest and weighty than the warning against these occult arts.2294 Augustus is advised to observe, and enforce the observance of the time-honoured ancestral forms, but he must banish sorcerers and diviners, who may sow the seeds of conspiracy against the prince. The advice was acted on. While the emperor rebuilt the fallen temples and revived the ancient Latin rites, 2000 books of unlicensed divination were in one day given to

are quoted by the great savant with approval.2299 These impostors were swarming in Rome at the time of Catiline's conspiracy,2300 inflating the hopes of the plotters. [pg 447]Suetonius has surpassed himself in the collection, from many sources, of the signs and wonders which foreshadowed the great destiny, and also the death of Augustus. And it is noteworthy that, among th

ions of future power which gathered round the popular candidate for the succession, or the dark warnings of coming disaster which excited the prince's fears and gave courage to enemies and rivals. It is not hard to see why the emperors at once believed in these black arts and profoundly distrusted their professors. They wished to keep a monopoly of that awful lore, lest it might excite dangerous hopes in possible pretenders.2302 To consult a Chaldaean seer on the fate of the prince, or to p

llus, his astrologer, who advised that the portended danger should be diverted from the emperor by the destruction of the great nobles. Some of the craft had predicted that Nero should one day be deserted and betrayed, while others consoled him with the promise of a great monarchy of the East with its seat at Jerusalem.2310 The terrible year which followed Nero's death was crowded with portents, and all the rivals for the succession were equally slaves of the adepts, who exploited their ambitions or their fears. The end of Galba was foreshadowed, from the opening of his reign, by ominous dreams and signs.2311 The hopes of Otho had long been inflamed by the diviner Seleucus,2312 and by Ptolemaeus, who was his companion during his command in Spain.2313 When he had won the dangerous prize, Otho was tortured by nightly visions of the spirit of Galba, which he used every art to lay. Yet this same man set out for the conflict on the Po in defiant disregard of omens warranted by the ancient religion.2314 His end, which, by a

all his race. The rebuilder of Roman temples and the restorer of Roman orthodoxy had also a firm faith in planetary lore. He lived in perpetual fear of his sudden end, the precise hour and manner of which the Chaldaeans had foretold in his early youth.2322 Among the many reasons for his savage proscription of the leading nobles, one of the most deadly was the possession of an imperial horoscope. On his side too, the haunted tyrant diligently studied the birth-hour of suspected or possible [pg 450]pretenders to the throne. In the last months of his reign his terror became more and more and more intense; never in the sam

last hour.2327 Even the last great imperial figure in our period is not free from the suspicion of having tampered with the dark arts. Julius Capitolinus reports a rumour that M. Aurelius consulted the Chaldaeans about the infatuated passion of Faustina for a gladiator.2328 In his [pg 451]account of the famous rainfall that miraculously refreshed the Roman troops in the Marcomannic war, D. Cassius ascribes the miracle to the magic arts of an Egyptian sorcerer whom M. Aurelius kept in his train.2329 Xiphilinus, however, who attributes the marvel to the prayers of the Thundering Legion, expressly denies that the emperor gave his countenance to these impostors. Another suspicious incident comes to us on the authority of Lucian. When the war on the Danube was at its height, the new oracle of Alexander of Abonoteichos had, by mingled audacity and skill, rapidly gained an extraordinary influence even among the greatest nobles in Italy. Rutilianus, one of the foremost among them, was its special patron and devotee, and actually ma

Sura an elaborate account of the romance of a haunted house at Athens.2333 His friend Suetonius had been disturbed by a dream as to the success of a cause in which he was to appear. Pliny consoled him with the hackneyed interpretation of dreams by contraries.2334 The biographer of the Caesars may contend with Dion Cassius for the honour of being probably the most superstitious chronicler who ever dealt with great events. Suetonius is shocked by the arrogance of Julius Caesar when he treated with disdain the warning of a diviner from the inspection of a vi

ing compliance, Tacitus had little faith either in Divine benevolence or in tempted human virtue.2341 Even the quiet and security of Trajan's reign seemed to him but a precarious interval, not to be too eagerly or confidently enjoyed, between the terror of the past and the probable dangers of a coming age.2342 The corruption of Roman virtue has justly earned the anger of gods, who no longer visit to protect, but only to avenge.2343 And, in the chaos of human affairs, the Divine justice is confused; the good suffer equally with the guilty.2344 Amid obscure and guarded utterances, we can divine that, to Tacitus, the ruling force in human fortunes is a destiny which is blind to the deserts of those who are its sport.2345 He probably held the widespread belief that the fate of each man was fixed for him at his birth, and, although he has a profound scorn for the venality and falsehood of the Chaldaean tribe

ich, intoxicated with almost superhuman power, dreamt of unheard of conquests over nature, made the Julio-Claudian emperors, in the eyes of men, a race half-fiend, half-god. Men hated and loathed them, yet were ready to deify them. It did not seem unnatural that Caligula should throw a gigantic arch over the Forum, to link the imperial palace with the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol.2353 Men long refused to believe in the death of Nero, and his reappearance was expected for generations.2354 In spite of the Augustan revival, the calm, if rather formal, sanity of old Roman religion had lost its power over cultivated minds. The East, with its fatalist superstitions, its apotheosis of lofty earthly sovereignty, its enthronement of an evil power beside the good, was completing the overthrow of the national faith. The air was [pg 455]full of the lawless and the supernatural. Science, in the modern sense, was yet unborn; it was a mere rudimentary mass of random guesses, with as little right to command the reason as the legends which sprang from the same lawless imagination. Philosophic speculation in any high sense had almost disappeared. The most powerful system which still lingered, resolved the gods into mere names for the various potencies of that dim and awful Power which thrills through the universe, which fixes from the beginning the destinies of men and nations, and which deigns to shadow forth its decrees in omen or oracle. Awestruck and helpless in the face of a cruel and

ich are said to have afflicted Epicurus and his brothers, and the persecution of their sect at Messene and in Crete.2361 After the tale of some specially impressive interference of Providence, he launches ferocious anathemas at the most famous sceptics, Xenophanes, Diagoras, and Epicurus.2362 He pursues Epicurus even to the tomb, and pours all his scorn on the unbelieving voluptuary's arrangements for biennial banquets to his shade.2363 He exults in the fate of one who, without initiation, tried to get a sight of the holy spectacle at Eleusis, and perished by falling from his secret point of observation.2364 It is needless to say that miraculous cures by Asclepius are related with the most exuberant faith. Aristarchus the tragic poet, and Theopompus the comedian, were restored from wasting and hopeless sickness by the god.2365 Another patient of the shrine had the vision, which [pg 457]was probably often a real fact, of a priest standing beside his bed in the night, bringing counsels of healing.2366 But the climax of ludicrous credulity is reached in the tale of the pious cock of Tanagra.2367 This favoured bird, being maimed in one leg, appeared before the shrine of Asclepius, holding out the injured limb, and, taking his place in the choir that sung the mo

2370 Aristides won a splendid reputation, which swelled [pg 458]his vanity to proportions rare even in a class whose vanity was proverbial. He won the restoration of the ruined Smyrna from M. Aurelius, by an oration which moved the Emperor to tears.2371 With a naturally feeble constitution and epileptic tendencies, the excitement of the sophist's life brought on an illness which lasted thirteen years. During that long ordeal, he developed a mystic superstition which, along with an ever-growing sel

clean-cut outlines of Hellenic imagination, and to sophisticate the ancestral faith both of Greece and Rome. Men wished to believe in the ancient gods, but they were no longer the gods of Homer or of Aeschylus, the gods worshipped by the men who fought [pg 459]in the Samnite or the Punic wars. Greek philosophy for eight centuries had been teaching a doctrine of one Divine force or essence, transcending the powers and limitations of sense, or immanent in the fleeting world of chance and change. Pagan theology had elaborated a celestial hierarchy, in which the Deity, removed to an infinite distance, was remotely linked to humanity by a graduated scale of inferior spiritual beings, daemons, and heroes.2376 Then came the religions of the East, with their doctrines of expiation for sin and ascetic preparation for communion, and visions of immortality. And, alongside of all these development

el with the great Olympian gods. His temples rose in every land where Greek or Roman culture prevailed. They were generally built with an eye to beauty of scenery, or the virtues of some clear, cold, ancient spring, or other health-giving powers in the site, which might reinforce the more mysterious influences of religion. And in every temple there was a hierarchy of sacred servants, who guarded a tradition of hieratic ceremonial and of medical science.2380 There was the chief priest, who may or may not have been a trained physician. There were the daduchi and pyrophori, who attended to the punctual service of the altars. There were the neocori, who were probably physicians, and who waited on the patients, interpreting their visions, and often supplementing them by other v

tion unnatural. Sleep, the most mysterious of physical phenomena, gives birth to mental states which are a constant surprise. Thoughts and powers which are latent in the waking hours, then start into life with a strange vivid[pg 461]ness and energy. Memory and imagination operate with a force which may well, in an age of fai

e in so many mysteries of the renascent paganism.2388 The heavenly vision could only come to the clear spirit, purged as far as might be from the grossness of the flesh.2389 ?γκο?μησι? for the sake of healing became a great, and probably in the main, a beneficent institution in the temples of many deities,2390 pre-eminently in those of Isis, Serapis, and Asclepius. The temple of Serapis at Canopus in Strabo's time was thronged by patients of the noblest rank, and was famous for its miraculous cures.2391 Among the many attributes of Queen Isis, none made a deeper impression than her benignant power of healing even the most desperate cases.2392 Her temples rose everywhere. Her dream interpreters were famous from the days of Cicero.2393 In her shrine at Smyrna Aristides ha

ed souls, with hereditary poison in vein and nerve, the bright cheerfulness, the orderly calm and confidence of the ritual, which had such a charm for the soul of Plutarch, may have exorcised, for the time, many an evil spirit, and wiped out the memory of old sins. Soothed and relieved in mind and body, the sufferer lay in the dimly lighted corridor, sinking to sleep, with a confidence that the god would somehow make his power felt in visions of the night.2395 Through a sliding panel, hid

ministry to suffering, and consecrating and ennobling it, the confidence inspired by the sedate cheerfulness of the priests and attendants, reinforced by the countless cases of miraculous cures recorded on the walls,2399-all this must have had a powerful and beneficent influence. And the visitors were not all invalids. The games and festivals drew together many merely for society and amusement. The theatre at Epidaurus must have provided constant entertainment for a far larger concourse than the patients of the temple.2400 A healthy regimen, which is abundantly attested,2401 with

and agonising pains which reduced him to the extremity of weakness.2403 But the extraordinary toughness and vitality [pg 464]of the man is even more striking than his sufferings. Aristides regarded health as the greatest of all blessings, the condition on which the value of all other blessings de

reached Smyrna in mid-winter, and all the physicians were puzzled to find any alleviation for his troubles.2406 Henceforth he passed, for thirteen years, from one temple to another, at the bidding of the gods-from Smyrna to Pergamum, or Chios, or Cyzicus, or Epidaurus-enduring often frightful hardships by land or sea. The description of his sufferings sometimes excites

were [pg 465]not the worst. Again and again, Aristides was enjoined, when in a high fever, to bathe two or three times in an ice-cold river running in full flood, and then race a mile at full speed in the face of a northerly gale. He obeyed in spite of all remonstrance, and the doctors and his anxious friends could only follow him to await the result of such extraordinary remedies. Strange to relate, the

cus, and Satyrus. Long observation of the freaks of individual temperament and constitution must have suggested to thoughtful minds, with some instincts of scientific method, that the supernatural vision should be interpreted in the light of experience. An awful dream of Aristides that all his bones [pg 466]and sinews must be excised, turned, in the hands of a faithful attendant, into a prediction of renewed vitality.2413 And although some of the nurses, to whom he is so grateful, confirmed his visions by precisely similar revelations of their own,2414 others, of the more skilled physicians, openly blamed his too confident reliance on his dreams, and his unwillingness to try the effect of more scientific treatment.2415 Their proposals, however, were sometimes so severe and heroic that we may excuse him for preferring on the whole the more patient and gentle methods of the god. The sufferer was sometimes favoured with epiphanies of Athene, Apollo, Serapis, and other great divinities, exalting him far above the rank of common votaries.2416 And Asclepius himself, to whom his special devotion was given, not only lightened his physical tortures, although after long year

on to produce a startling or seductive effect on the audience had become a second nature. Truth was a secondary matter, not from any moral obliquity, but from the influence of prolonged training. And so, we may retain a belief in the genuine piety or superstition of Aristides, while we may distrust his narrative. The piety or the mystic superstition may not have been less sincere, although it was mingled with egregious vanity, and expressed itself in the carefully moulded and highly coloured phrases of the schools. Nor should we doubt the piety of Aristides because he deem

perverted ingenuity and a cold, quasi-scientific tolerance of some of the worst moral enormities of antiquity, Artemidorus seems to have been an earnest and industrious man, who wrote with the mistaken object of doing a service both to his own age and to posterity.2423 Like other pious men of the time, he was afflicted by the profane attitude of the sceptics,2424 and determined to refute them by the solid proofs of a sifted experience. He also wished to furnish guidance to the crowd, who believed in their visions, but were bewildered from the want of clear canons of interpretation. There was evidently afloat a voluminous oneirocritic literature. But it was, according to Artemidorus, frequently wanting in depth and system,2425 and random guesses had too often been the substitute for minute, exhaustive obse

emselves plainly, they also frequently veil their meaning in shadowy, enigmatic form, in order to test men's faith and patience.2429 Hence there is need of skilled interpretation, which demands the widest observation, acute criticism combined with reverent faith, and deference to ancient custom and traditional lore. It is curious to see how this apostle of what, to our minds, is a pestilent superstition, pours his scorn on the newer or lower forms of divination.2430 The Pythagorean dream-rea

hings, and many others which might conceivably, or inconceivably, enter into the fabric of a dream, are painfully collected and arranged for the guidance of the future inquirer. And this demands not only an effort of logical classification, but also an immense knowledge of the customs and peculiarities of different races,2433 the special attributes of each of the gods, and a minute acquaintance with the natural history of the time. For, special circumstances and details cannot be safely neglected in the interpretation of dreams. It may make the greatest difference whether the same dream comes to a rich man or a poor man,2434 to a man or a woman, to a married woman or a virgin, to old or young, to king or subject. To one it may mean the greatest of blessings, to another calamity or death. For instance, for a priest of Isis to dream of a shaven head is of good omen; to any other person it is ominous of evil.2435 To dream that you have the head of a lion or elephant is a prediction of a rise above your natural estate; but to dream that you have the horns of an ox portends violent death.2436 To dream of shoemaking and carpentry foretells happy marriage and friendship, but the vision of a tanner's yard, from its connection with foul odours and death, may foreshadow disgrace and disaster.2437 To

s us that Delphi, Dodona, and Ammon had shared in the general contempt which had fallen on oracular divination.2443 From Plutarch we have seen that in Boeotia, the most famous home of the art, all the oracular shrines were silent and deserted, except that of Trophonius at Lebadea.2444 And curious inquirers gave various explanations of this waning faith. Strabo thought that, with the spread of Roman power, the Sibylline prophecies and the Etruscan augury eclipsed the Greek and Eastern oracles. The explanation in Plutarch, as we have seen, is involved in

n the reign of Tiberius visited the shrine of the Clarian Apollo, and that of Apis at Memphis;2447 Tiberius tried the sacred lottery at Padua,2448 Caligula that of Fortune at Antium.2449 Nero, although he is said to have choked the sacred chasm at Delphi with corpses, had previously sought light from the god on his perilous future.2450 Before the altar of th

t Abonoteichos, found it politic to defer to the authority of oracles, such as those of Clarus and Didyma, with a great past.2454 If the conquests of Rome for a time obscured their fame, the ease and rapidity of com[pg 473]munication along the Roman roads, and the safety of the seas, must have swelled the number of their votaries from all parts of the world. It is a revelation to find a Tungrian cohort at a remote station in Britain setting up a votive inscription in obedience to the voice of the Clarian Apollo.2455 If new oracles were springing up in the An

ndencies of Protestantism in some countries, at each fresh revival of religious excitement. Any fresh avenue to the "Great Mystery" was at once eagerly cr

n of the new oracle of Asclepius at Abonoteichos in Paphlagonia, if it is wanting in the sympathetic handling which modern criticism has attained or can affect, is an

cle.2464 Alexander had carefully studied the system of the older oracles, and he proceeded to imitate it. He received inquiries on sealed tablets, and, with all ancient pomp and ceremony of attendance, returned them, apparently untouched, with the proper answer. But Lucian minutely explains the art with which the seal of the missive was dexterously broken and restored.2465 A hot needle and a delicate hand could easily reveal the secret of the question, and hide the trick. The oracle was primarily medical. Prescriptions were given in more or less ambiguous phrases. The charge for each consultation was, in our money, the [pg 475]small fee of a shilling.2466 Alexander was evidently a shrewd business man, and his moderate charges attracting a crowd of inquirers, the income of the oracle rose, according to Lucian, to the then enormous sum of nearly ￡7000 a year.2467 But the manager was liberal to his numerous staff of secretaries, interpreters, and versifiers.2468 He had, moreover, missionaries who spread his fame in foreign lands, and who offered the service of the oracle in recovering runaway slaves, discovering buried treasure, healing sickness, and raising the dead.2469 Even the barbarians on the outskirts of civilisation were attracted by his fame, and, after an interval required to find a translator among the motley crowd who thronged from all lands, an answer would be returned even in the Celtic or Syrian tongue.2470 The fame of the oracle, of course, soon spread to Italy, where the highest nobles, eager for any novelty in religion, were carried away by the pretensions of Alexander. None among them stood higher than Rutilianus, either in character or official rank. But he was the slave of every kind of extravagant superstition.2471 He would fall down and grovel along the way before any stone which was shining with oil or decked with garlands. He sent

ht for. A hexameter verse, promising the help of Apollo, was inscribed over every doorway as an amulet against the awful pestilence of 166 A.D. Another ordered two lion's cubs to be flung into the Danube, to check the advance of the Marcomanni.2480 Both proved dismal failures, but without shaking the authority of the impostor, who found an easy apology in the darkness of old Delphic utterances. He established mysteries after the model of Eleusis, from which Christians and Ep

oman Empire, are facts on which Lucian's testimony, addressed to contemporaries, cannot be rejected. Nor is there anything in our knowledge of the period from other sources which renders the thing doubtful. Creative mythology had revived its activity. Not long before the epiphany of Glycon, in a neighbouring part of Asia Minor the Apostles Paul and Barnabas, after the miraculous cure of the impotent man, had difficulty in escaping divine honours. The Carpocratians, a Gnostic sect, about the same time built a temple in honour of the youthful son of their founder.2482 The corn-goddess Annona first appears in the first century, and inscriptions, both in Italy and Africa, were set up in honour of the power who presided over the commissariat of the Roman mob.2483 The youthful favourite of Hadrian, after his mysterious death in the waters of the Nile, was glorified by instant apotheosis. [pg 478]His statues rose in every market-place and temple court; his soul was supposed to have found a ho

of the great goddess of their Acropolis, leading the tyrant home.2489 In the minds of a philosophic minority, nurtured on the theology of Plato, there might be the dim conception of one awful and remote Power, far removed from the grossness of earth, far above the dreams of mythologic poetry and the materialist imagination of the masses. Yet [pg 479]even philosophy, as we have already seen, had succumbed to the craving for immediate contact, or for some means of communication, with the Infinite Spirit. The daemons of Plutarch and Maximus of Tyre were really a new philosophic mythology, created

m abstract qualities was from early ages congenial to the Roman mind. All the phenomena of nature-every act, pursuit, or vicissitude in human life-found a spiritual patron in the Roman imagination.2490 But the tendency received an immense impulse in the age with which we are dealing, and the inscriptions of the imperial period reveal an almost inexha

heir place in his growing pantheon.2493 They were constantly identified with the great figures of Greek or Roman mythology. Many an inscription is dedicated to Apollo Grannus of Alsace, whom Caracalla invoked for the recovery of his health, along with Serapis and Aesculapius.2494 Apollo Belenus, a favourite deity in Southern Gaul, was the special patron of Aquileia.2495 Batucardus and Cocideus received vows and dedications in Cumberland and Westmorland, Arardus and Agho in the Pyrenees, Abnoba in the Black Forest;2496 and many another deity with strange, outlandish name, like their provincial votaries, were honoured with sacred Roman citizenship, and took their places, although in a lower grade, with Serapis of Alexandria or Asclepius of Epidaurus. The local heroes were also adored at wayside shrines or altars, which met the traveller in lonely passes. In the heart of the Nubian desert, inscriptions, scratched on obelisk or temple porch, attest the all-embracing faith of the Roman legionary.2497 At Carlsbourg in Transylvania, a legate of the 5th Legion records his own gratitude to Aesculapius

rd to see how, on such principles, he could deal with the daemon of the Apolline shrine at Delphi, when he denounced the Spartan Glaucus for the mere thought of a breach of faith to his friend,2506 or the daemon who lurked under the pure stately form of Athene Polissouchos, when she threw [pg 482]a maiden goddess's protection around the Antigones of Athens. In the field of miracle in the second century the heathen could easily match the Christian. With gods in every grove and fountain, and on every mountain summit; with gods breathing in the winds and flashing in the lightning, or the ray of sun and star, heaving in the earthquake or the November storm in the Aegean, watching over every society of men congregated for any purpose, guarding the solitary hunter or traveller in the Alps o

ind man from Pannonia [pg 483]came and touched the fever-wracked emperor, and immediately regained his sight. The legend of the Thundering Legion was long the battle-ground of opposing faiths equally credulous, and equally bent on securing the credit of supernatural powers. The timely rainfall was attributed with equal assurance to the incantations of an Egyptian sorcerer, to the prayers of the believers in Jupiter, or the prayers of the believers in Christ. Apuleius, who was himself prosecuted for practising the black art, has filled his Thessalian romance with the most astounding tales of fantastic sorcery. He may have copied other lawless romances, but he would hardly have given such space to these weird arts if his public had not had an uneasy belief in them. The home of Medea in the days of M. Aurelius was a veritable witch's cave: the air is tremulous with superstitious fear: everything seems possible in the field of miraculous metamorphosis or monstrous vice. If Apuleius had meant to discredit superstition by w

g