Saint Mary of Egypt. It belongs to Armenians of the Roman Catholic faith
who reside in Rome; and the thought suggests itself that that
vicissitude is not entirely inappropriate which has brought to pass that
the temple, where ancient courtesans sought the aid of the goddess of
chance, is now dedicated to Mary, the famous penitent of Egypt.
It was customary in imperial Rome for temples to be erected in honor of
the emperors, but the memory of only one woman was ever thus celebrated;
and in this case the devotion of the husband, rather than worthiness on
the part of his wife, is indicated. This was the temple of Faustina,
built after her death by the noble Antoninus Pius. If the historians of
the time can be relied upon in the matter, there were no qualities in
Faustina save her beauty which her imperial husband could justly
commemorate. But Antoninus thought differently; and, in the history of
the emperors, there is certainly nothing so affecting as the sanctity in
which, to the day of his death, he held her memory.
However faulty
Faustina may have been, surely she was as worthy of being deified as
most of the emperors who received that honor. This, undoubtedly, was
the thought of her husband, who was too much of a philosopher to believe
seriously in any of the Roman deities, human or supernatural. He simply
adopted the popular method in his desire to pay the highest honor
possible to his wife. This temple, parts of which still remain, was also
used as a church during the Middle Ages; but its chief interest at the
present day is found in the numerous ancient scribblings that have been
discovered upon its columns and their bases.
During the earlier years of the Republic, religion had an extremely good
effect upon the morals of the people. Men dared not invoke the aid of
Jove in an unjust cause; women could hope for favors at the hands of
Vesta, Ceres, or Bona Dea only by pledging the rectitude of their
conduct. But as the people lived continually in the fear of the gods,
their religion was more effective as a police institution than it was
productive as a source of comfort. As is inevitable with all religions,
the spirit demanded new forms before the people became conscious that
the old were outgrown; and the time came when Roman worship became
nothing more than tiresome, uninteresting ceremonies, which were
conducted with incredibly slavish care respecting niceties of ritual.
This ceased to appeal to the heart, and could no longer commend itself
convincingly to the mind. Hence, when foreign deities and new forms of
worship came to Rome in the triumphal processions of the victorious
generals, the people were ready to receive them with that hope which
always welcomes untried possibilities.
A new deity ushered into their well-filled pantheon always seemed to the
Romans a valuable acquisition. A god in Rome was a god for Rome; and to
extend cordial hospitality to all known divinities was a part of the
national policy. As the conquering armies carried the fame of Rome
further in the world, the women at home had an ever-widening range of
divinities at whose altars they might make supplication for the success
of the warriors. The city at last became as cosmopolitan in its pantheon
as in its population. If the matrons tired of, or were disappointed
with, time-honored Vesta and Ceres, they might turn to the
passion-exciting rites of the Syrian Astarte, to the weird ceremonies of
the Phrygian Cybele, or to the more intellectual mysteries of the
Egyptian Isis. When Veii was captured, the most highly valued spoil was
the statue of Matuta; and as fortune had forsaken the city, the goddess
seemed content to depart with it. So at least the Romans believed; for
they asserted that when the deity was asked if she were willing to take
up her abode at Rome, she assented with a perceptible nod of the head.
This was considered a piece of good fortune of almost equal worth with
the gain of the city. The worship of Matuta being more peculiarly the
function of the women, the fact that they outdid the men in their
rejoicing is thus accounted for, history informing us that they crowded
the temples to give thanks even before the people were ordered to do so
by the Senate. Only married women, and of these only the freeborn, were
allowed in the temple of Matuta, except when they carried thither their
children for the blessing of the goddess.
But the first marked deterioration of the ancient Roman worship through
the influence of foreign rites occurred with the advent of the Idæan
Mother. In B.C. 203, the Romans, at the command of the Sybilline
oracles, sent to Asia Minor for the famous Phrygian deity Cybele, the
mythical mother of the gods. The Senate was required to appoint the most
virtuous man in the Republic to the duty of receiving the image of the
goddess. This honor was awarded to Publius Scipio; but it was reserved
to a matron to derive from the incident a more lasting fame and a
greater present advantage. The women of Rome went to Ostia to escort the
deity to the city. The legend narrates that the vessel bearing the image
ran upon a shoal at the mouth of the Tiber, and all efforts to get it
off proved ineffectual. One of the noblest of the matrons present was
Claudia Quinta. Whether justly or otherwise, this lady had been brought
under suspicion in regard to her conduct. Seeing in the predicament of
the goddess a grand opportunity, she adventured her reputation upon a
daring chance for vindication. Making her way to the side of the vessel,
it being close to the bank, she supplicated the divine mother to bear
witness to her virtue by following the persuasion of her chaste hands.
Then she fastened her girdle to the prow of the boat, and, to the wonder
of all and to the overthrow of her slanderers, the vessel easily yielded
to her slight exertion. As a proof of the truth of this, following
generations could point to the statue of Claudia which the men of the
time erected at the door of the temple of Cybele.
Victor Duruy, commenting on the change wrought by these new divinities,
says, "they gave a new cast to the religious convictions of people to
whom a very crude form of worship had so long sufficed.
Born in the
scorching East, these deities required savage rites and pious orgies.
Dramatic spectacles, intoxicating ceremonies, affected violently the
dull Roman mind, and excited religious frenzy; for the first time the
Roman felt those transports which, according to the character of the
doctrine and the condition of the mind, produce effects diametrically
opposite,--absolute purity of life, or the excess of debauchery
sanctified by religious belief." Lucretius bears testimony to the truth
of this in the vivid picture he draws of the extravagancies which
characterized the festival of Cybele. He describes her attendants in
their pageants through the streets, dancing with ropes, leaping about to
the sound of horrid music, while blood streams from their self-inflicted
wounds. How this affected the women may be gathered from Juvenal, who
pictures this furious chorus entering a house, and the priest
threatening the matron with coming disasters, which she willingly seeks
to avert with costly offerings. In another place he refers to the temple
of "the imported mother of the gods" as being frequented by the
abandoned women, who took part in the orgies performed in her honor.
That the women were more addicted than the men to the worship of foreign
deities is perhaps suggested by a passage in Tibullus.
The poet is away
from Rome, and sick. He complains: "There is no Delia here, who, when
she was about to let me go from the city, first consulted all the
gods.... Everything prognosticated my return, yet nothing could hinder
her from weeping and turning to look after me as I went.... What does
your Isis for me now, Delia? What avail me those brazen sistra of hers
so often shaken by your hand? Now, goddess, succor me; for that man may
be healed by thee is proved by many a picture in thy temples. Let my
Delia, dressed in linen, sit before thy sacred doors, performing vigils
vowed for me; and twice a day, with hair unbound, let her recite thy due
praises. But be it my lot to celebrate my native Penates, and to offer
monthly incense to my ancient Lar."
But the most injurious of all the foreign superstitions was the
Bacchanalian cult, which was introduced into Rome during the second
century before Christ by a lowborn Greek from Etruria.
He professed
himself to be a priest in charge of secret nocturnal rites. By appealing
to the very worst propensities of which human nature is capable, he
soon gathered around him a large following of men and women, and these
included representatives of the noblest families. They engaged in
certain religious performances; but the chief attraction was an
unrestrained indulgence in wine, feasting, and passion.
Naturally, this
organization also became a hotbed for every sort of crime, including
murder and conspiracy. Owing to the pledge of secrecy extorted from the
initiates, the contagion had spread to a prodigious extent before it
came to the notice of the Senate. In the manner of its discovery, we
have an interesting drama which throws light, not only upon the matter
itself, but also reveals somewhat of the position of a certain class of
Roman women, of which history takes little personal account.
Publius Æbutius was a young man of knightly rank, whose father was dead
and whose mother, Duronia, had married again. His stepfather, having
abused the property of Æbutius, and being unwilling to give an account,
conspired with the unnatural mother so to manage that her son would not
be in a position to demand an accounting. They agreed that the
Bacchanalian rites were the only way to effect the ruin of the young
man. Accordingly, his mother informed him that during his sickness she
had vowed that, if through the kindness of the gods he should recover,
she would initiate him into the rites of the Bacchanalians. She
instructed him for ten days how to prepare himself, and promised that on
the tenth she would conduct him to the place of meeting.
The youth very
innocently agreed to this, thinking that it was only the due of the gods
by whose favor he enjoyed his restored health. All would have gone as
his mother desired, had it not been for the fact that he had formed a
strong attachment for a courtesan named Hispala Fecenia.
This young
freedwoman was of a character far superior to the mode of life into
which she had been forced while still a slave. Hispala knew more of the
world than did Æbutius; and when he informed her that he was about to be
initiated into the rites of the Bacchanalians, she declared that it
would be better for him and also for her to lose their lives than that
he should do such a thing. She told him that when she was a slave she
had been taken to those rites by her mistress, though since her
emancipation she had been exceedingly careful to avoid the place. She
said that she knew it to be the haunt of all kinds of debauchery. Before
they parted, the young man gave her his solemn promise that he would
keep clear of those rites. The result of his adherence to this was that
his mother and stepfather drove him from home, and he was goaded into
telling the whole affair to the Consul Postumius, after first taking
counsel with his aunt Æbutia.
After certain inquiries, Hispala was brought into the presence of the
consul, to whom she gave a full account of the origin of the mysteries.
She said that, at first, the rites were performed only by women. No man
was admitted. At that time, they had three stated days in the year on
which persons were initiated, but only in the daytime.
The matrons then
used to be appointed priestesses in rotation. Paculla Minia, a
Campanian, when priestess, rearranged the whole system, alleging that
she did so by the direction of the gods. She introduced men, the first
being her own sons; she changed the time of celebration from day to
night; and instead of three days in the year, appointed five days in
each month for initiation. From the time that the rites were made thus
common, and the licentious freedom of the night was added, there was
nothing wicked, nothing flagitious, that had not been practised among
them. To think nothing unlawful was the grand maxim of their religion.
After Hispala had made this revelation, Postumius proceeded to lay the
whole matter before the Senate. A vigorous prosecution of the
Bacchanalians ensued; and it was found that over seven thousand men and
women had taken the oath of the association, thus proving that the rapid
growth of a religion gives no assurance of the truth of its doctrines or
the purity of its principles. Those who were found to be most deeply
stained by evil practices were put to death; many put an end to
themselves, so as to avoid punishment at the hands of the authorities;
the others were imprisoned. The women who were condemned were delivered
to their relations, or to those under whose guardianship they were, to
be punished in private; but if there did not appear any proper person of
the kind to execute the sentence, the punishment was nevertheless
inflicted, but in private and by a person appointed by the court.
The Senate also passed a vote, on the suggestion of the Consul
Postumius, that the city quæstors should give to both Æbutius and
Hispala a certain goodly sum of money out of the public treasury, as a
reward for discovering the iniquitous Bacchanalian ceremonies. Æbutius
was exempted from compulsory service in the army; and to Hispala it was
granted that she should enjoy the unique privileges of disposing in any
way she chose of her property; that she should be at liberty to wed a
man of honorable birth, and that there should be no disgrace to him who
should marry her; and that it should be the business of the consuls then
in office, and of their successors, to take care that no injury should
ever be offered to her.
Though the Bacchanalian abuses were thus strenuously dealt with by the
Roman authorities, this and other like parasitical growths which
fastened themselves upon the religious instincts of the people were not
to be shaken off. Among the many noxious developments that crept over
and eventually choked the life out of the sturdy ancient stock, we find
every vicious substitute for religion known to the ante-Christian world.
During the decadence of Rome, the ancient national religion became
disintegrated and almost wholly superseded. Many of the empresses
patronized the foreign orgiastic cults; and, taking the many-sided
development of Roman religion as a whole, the strange spectacle is
presented of a remarkable improvement in philosophy accompanying a great
deterioration in morals. On the one hand, there were those who were
struggling to a conception of the transcendental nature of the deity and
the unity of nature; on the other hand were those who were doing in the
name of the gods everything that is considered unworthy of humanity. And
in all the evil fructification of base conceptions of religion, as well
as in the knowledge of the higher philosophy, woman had her full share.
No Roman woman was irreligious, however great the obliquity of her moral
character, though sometimes her piety took a form so bizarre that the
fact outruns imagination. Agrippina the Younger, for an example, was
created priestess to the deified Claudius, whom she had cajoled into
marrying her despite the fact that he was her uncle.
It must not be imagined, however, that because Roman religion developed
these excesses through the infusion of Oriental superstitions, it came
to be devoid of those uplifting influences which are the province of
faith in the divine. There were never wanting those who, loving the
good, the beautiful, and the true, supported their aspirations by their
belief in the providence of deity; and the doctrine of a future life,
though held only with much vacillation by the philosophers, was
continually resorted to for comfort by the multitude.
How widespread
were these ideas, and how greatly similar to our own were the thoughts
of those ancient Romans, are matters lost sight of by people who need no
further reason for dismissing a religion from their consideration than
the mere fact that it is pagan. Plutarch, who defended the dogma of the
unity of God, of His providence, and of the immortality of the soul,
wrote to his wife: "You know that there are those who persuade the
multitude that the soul, when once freed from the body, suffers no
inconvenience nor evil." The more positive, though less philosophical,
faith of the people is illustrated by the words a mother carved upon the
sepulchre of her child: "We are afflicted by a cruel wound; but thou,
renewed in thy existence, livest in the Elysian fields.
The gods order
that he who has deserved the light of day should return under another
form; this is a reward which thy goodness has gained thee. Now, in a
flowery mead, the blessed, marked with the sacred seal, admit thee to
the flock of Bacchus, where the Naiades, who bear the sacred baskets,
claim thee as their companion in leading the solemn processions by the
light of the torches." Except for somewhat of the imagery, and the pagan
names, this woman's faith might easily be accepted as Christian.
IV
THE PASSING OF OLD ROMAN SIMPLICITY
With the spread of her foreign conquests, Rome herself was subjugated
by a rapid revolution in thought and habit. From the middle of the
second century before Christ, we look in vain for the old Republic.
Religion, manners, morals, occupations, amusements--all have changed.
The old-time Roman character is passing away, like a tide, through the
narrowing channel of the ever-decreasing number of those who cling to
the ancient ideals. Morality has started upon that ebb of which the days
of Caligula and Nero saw the lowest mark to which a civilized people
ever fell. The Romans could not withstand the temptations incidental to
conquest. Physically invincible, they were not armed against the onset
of foreign vices. The State grew inordinately wealthy by pillage and
exaction; a single campaign yielded booty to the value of nine million
six hundred thousand dollars. Scipio wept when he took Carthage; for
well he knew that his people were in no way prepared to assume such
extensive dominion, except at the cost of national character. Polybius
says that after the conquest of Macedon men believed themselves able to
enjoy in all security the conquest of the world and the spoils thereof.
But wealth was not the sole constituent of the harvest gathered in by
Roman swords. After the transmarine wars, new ideas and Greek learning
became common among a people who were not adapted, as the Greeks, to
mere theorizing, but carried out their thoughts, whether for good or
ill, to the full extent of their powers. The consequence was that Rome
plunged with deadly earnestness into newly acquired vices; and the novel
teachings of Hellenism, instead of elevating the minds of the people,
served only to create indifference to the ancient divinities. "You ask,"
says Juvenal, "whence arise our disorders? A humble life in other days
preserved the innocence of the Latin women. Protracted vigils, hands
hardened by toil, Hannibal at the gates of Rome, and Roman citizens in
arms upon her walls, guarded from vice the modest dwellings of our
fathers. Now we endure the evils of a long peace; luxury has fallen upon
us, more formidable than the sword, and the conquered world has avenged
itself upon us by the gift of its vices. Since Rome has lost her noble
poverty, Sybaris and Rhodes, Miletus and Tarentum, crowned with roses
and scented with perfumes, have entered our walls." All the ancient
writers agree upon the same verdict. The old austerity of life was more
the result of poverty than of conscience; the simple habits of the first
centuries of the Republic were cherished only so long as there were no
means to render them more luxurious. Had wealth come to Rome through
industry, the slower process, which alone develops the power of
appreciation, would have fitted the people to make good use of their
better fortune.
But riches surprised them; and we see ostentatious depravity quickly
taking the place of a pure, though meagre, life. To quote again from
Polybius, who himself was carried from Macedon to Rome as a prisoner of
war: "Most of the Romans live in strange dissipation.
The young allow
themselves to be carried away by the most shameful excesses. They are
given to shows, to feasts, to luxury and disorder of every kind, which
it is too evident they have learned from the Greeks during the war with
Perseus." Cato calls attention to the new manners with that bitter scorn
which was so strong in the old Roman. "See this Roman,"
he says; "he
descends from his chariot, he pirouettes, he recites buffooneries and
jokes and vile stories, then sings or declaims Greek verses, and then
resumes his pirouettes." Imitation of the Greeks was zealously adopted
in the education of the young. Scipio Æmilianus says:
"When I entered
one of the schools to which the nobles send their sons, great gods! I
found there more than five hundred young girls and lads who were
receiving among actors and infamous persons lessons on the lyre, in
singing, in posturing; and I saw a child of twelve, the son of a
candidate for office, executing a dance worthy of the most licentious
slave." The school here referred to must not be understood as the
regular institution for the imparting of knowledge to Roman children;
the purpose of that described seems to have been the cultivation of what
the Romans had come to regard as genteel accomplishments. There were
other schools for instruction in reading, writing, and the usual
branches of knowledge. These schools also were as free of access to
girls as to boys, and were always conducted as private enterprises
rather than by the State.
The remarkable revolution in thought and manners which Hellenism
introduced into Rome could not fail profoundly to affect the existence
of woman. That she was not far behind man in "running to every excess of
riot" is abundantly shown by the historians and other writers of the
time. In that city which was once remarkable for the purity of its
morals, houses of ill repute became plentiful. These were occupied
principally by women who had been slaves, but had gained their liberty
by the sacrifice of their honor. Houses of this character are the scenes
of nearly all the comedies of Plautus and Terence, who found all their
material in Rome, though they located the brothels of which they write
at Athens and used Greek names for their characters.
Prostitution,
however, was not confined to the freedwomen; women of all classes were
necessarily drawn into the vortex of degeneracy.
Notwithstanding the
fact that in B.C. 141 the Senate made a serious effort to resist the
increasing looseness of morals, going so far as to build a temple to
Venus Verticordia, the Venus who was supposed to convert women's hearts
to virtue, the character of the times devoted the whole sex too
zealously to Aphrodite for anything noteworthy to result from the appeal
to her nobl