Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/201

Rh fruits of the field paid the penalty to Ceres on the gallows just as did the enemy to Mother Earth and the good spirits on the field of battle. The profound and fearful idea of substitution also meets us here; when the gods of the community spry, and no one could be laid hold of as definitely guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself up (devovere se); and noxious chasms in the ground were closed, and battles half lost were converted into victories, when a brave burgess threw himself as an expiatory ring into the abyss or upon the foe. The "sacred spring" was based on a similar view; all the offspring whether of cattle or of men within a specified period were presented to the gods. If acts of this nature are to be called human sacrifices, then such sacrifices belonged to the essence of the Latin faith; but we are bound to add that, so far back as our view reaches into the past, this immolation where life was concerned was limited to the guilty who had been convicted before a civil tribunal, or to the innocent who voluntarily chose to die. Human sacrifices of a different description, which are inconsistent with the fundamental idea of a sacrificial act, and which, wherever they have occurred among the Indo-Germanic stocks at least, have been the offspring of later degeneracy and barbarism, never gained admission among the Romans; hardly in a single instance were superstition and despair induced, in times of extreme distress, to seek an extraordinary deliverance through means so revolting. Comparatively slight traces are to be found among the Romans of belief in ghosts, fear of magical arts, or dealing in mysteries. Oracles and prophecy never acquired the importance in Italy which they obtained in Greece, and never were able to exercise a really commanding influence over public or private life.

But on the other hand the Latin religion sank into a singular sobriety and dullness, and early became shrivelled into an anxious and dreary round of ceremonies. The god of the Italian was, as we have already said, above all things an instrument for helping him to the attainment of very solid earthly objects; indeed the turn thus given to his religious views by the tendency of the Italian towards the palpable and the real is no less distinctly apparent in the saint-worship of the modern inhabitants of Italy. The gods confronted man just as a creditor confronted his debtor; each of them had a duly acquired right to certain performances and pay-