The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5). Theodor Mommsen

it to restriction. In permission or in prohibition the law was always absolute. As the foreigner who had none to intercede for him was like the hunted deer, so the guest was on a footing of equality with the burgess. A contract did not ordinarily furnish a ground of action, but where the right of the creditor was acknowledged, it was so all-powerful that there was no deliverance for the poor debtor, and no humane or equitable consideration was shown towards him. It seemed as if the law found a pleasure in presenting on all sides its sharpest spikes, in drawing the most extreme consequences, in forcibly obtruding on the bluntest understanding the tyrannic nature of the idea of right. The poetical form and the genial symbolism, which so pleasingly prevail in the Germanic legal ordinances, were foreign to the Roman; in his law all was clear and precise; no symbol was employed, no institution was superfluous. It was not cruel; everything necessary was performed without much ceremony, even the punishment of death; that a free man could not be tortured was a primitive maxim of Roman law, to obtain which other peoples have had to struggle for thousands of years. Yet this law was frightful in its inexorable severity, which we cannot suppose to have been very greatly mitigated by humanity in practice, for it was really the law of the people; more terrible than Venetian -piombi- and chambers of torture was that series of living entombments which the poor man saw yawning before him in the debtors' towers of the rich. But the greatness of Rome was involved in, and was based upon, the fact that the Roman people ordained for itself and endured a system of law, in which the eternal principles of freedom and of subordination, of property and of legal redress, reigned and still at the present day reign unadulterated and unmodified.

      Notes for Book I Chapter XI

      1. This "chariot-seat"—philologically no other explanation can well be given (comp. Servius ad Aen. i. 16)—is most simply explained by supposing that the king alone was entitled to ride in a chariot within the city (v. The King)—whence originated the privilege subsequently accorded to the chief magistrate on solemn occasions—and that originally, so long as there was no elevated tribunal, he gave judgment, at the comitium or wherever else he wished, from the chariot-seat.

      2. I. V. The Housefather and His Household

      3. The story of the death of king Tatius, as given by Plutarch (Rom. 23, 24), viz. that kinsmen of Tatius had killed envoys from Laurentum; that Tatius had refused the complaint of the kinsmen of the slain for redress; that they then put Tatius to death; that Romulus acquitted the murderers of Tatius, on the ground that murder had been expiated by murder; but that, in consequence of the penal judgments of the gods that simultaneously fell upon Rome and Laurentum, the perpetrators of both murders were in the sequel subjected to righteous punishment—this story looks quite like a historical version of the abolition of blood-revenge, just as the introduction of the -provocatio- lies at the foundation of the myth of the Horatii. The versions of the same story that occur elsewhere certainly present considerable variations, but they seem to be confused or dressed up.

      4. The -mancipatio- in its developed form must have been more recent than the Servian reform, as the selection of mancipable objects, which had for its aim the fixing of agricultural property, shows, and as even tradition must have assumed, for it makes Servius the inventor of the balance. But in its origin the -mancipatio- must be far more ancient; for it primarily applies only to objects which are acquired by grasping with the hand, and must therefore in its earliest form have belonged to the epoch when property consisted essentially in slaves and cattle (-familia pecuniaque-). The enumeration of those objects which had to be acquired by -mancipatio-, falls accordingly to be ranked as a Servian innovation; the -mancipatio- itself, and consequently the use also of the balance and of copper, are older. Beyond doubt -mancipatio- was originally the universal form of purchase, and occurred in the case of all articles even after the Servian reform; it was only a misunderstanding of later ages which put upon the rule, that certain articles had to be transferred by -mancipatio-, the construction that these articles only and no others could be so transferred.

      5. Viz. for the year of ten months one twelfth part of the capital (-uncia-), which amounts to 8 ⅓ per cent for the year of ten, and 10 per cent for the fear of twelve, months.

      6. I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

      7. I. VI. Dependents and Guests.

      8. I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

      9. I. VI. Class of—Metoeci—Subsisting by the Side of the Community

CHAPTER XII

       Table of Contents

      Religion

      Roman Religion

      The Roman world of gods, as we have already indicated,(1) was a higher counterpart, an ideal reflection, of the earthly Rome, in which the little and the great were alike repeated with painstaking exactness. The state and the clan, the individual phenomenon of nature as well as the individual mental operation, every man, every place and object, every act even falling within the sphere of Roman law, reappeared in the Roman world of gods; and, as earthly things come and go in perpetual flux, the circle of the gods underwent a corresponding fluctuation. The tutelary spirit, which presided over the individual act, lasted no longer than that act itself: the tutelary spirit of the individual man lived and died with the man; and eternal duration belonged to divinities of this sort only in so far as similar acts and similarly constituted men and therefore spirits of a similar kind were ever coming into existence afresh. As the Roman gods ruled over the Roman community, so every foreign community was presided over by its own gods; but sharp as was the distinction between the burgess and non-burgess, between the Roman and the foreign god, both foreign men and foreign divinities could be admitted by resolution of the community to the freedom of Rome, and when the citizens of a conquered city were transported to Rome, the gods of that city were also invited to take up their new abode there.

      Oldest Table of Roman Festivals

      We obtain information regarding the original cycle of the gods, as it stood in Rome previous to any contact with the Greeks, from the list of the public and duly named festival-days (-feriae publicae-) of the Roman community, which is preserved in its calendar and is beyond all question the oldest document which has reached us from Roman antiquity. The first place in it is occupied by the gods Jupiter and Mars along with the duplicate of the latter, Quirinus. To Jupiter all the days of full moon (-idus-) are sacred, besides all the wine-festivals and various other days to be mentioned afterwards; the 21st May (-agonalia-) is dedicated to his counterpart, the "bad Jovis" (-Ve-diovis-). To Mars belongs the new-year of the 1st March, and generally the great warrior-festival in this month which derived its very name from the god; this festival, introduced by the horse-racing (-equirria-) on the 27th February, had during March its principal solemnities on the days of the shield-forging (-equirria- or -Mamuralia-, March 14), of the armed dance at the Comitium (-quinquatrus-, March 19), and of the consecration of trumpets (-tubilustrium-, March 23). As, when a war was to be waged, it began with this festival, so after the close of the campaign in autumn there followed a further festival of Mars, that of the consecration of arms (-armilustrium-, October 19). Lastly, to the second Mars, Quirinus, the 17th February was appropriated (-Quirinalia-). Among the other festivals those which related to the culture of corn and wine hold the first place, while the pastoral feasts play a subordinate part. To this class belongs especially the great series of spring-festivals in April, in the course of which sacrifices were offered on the 15th to Tellus, the nourishing earth (-fordicidia-, sacrifice of the pregnant cow), on the 19th to Ceres, the goddess of germination and growth (-Cerialia-) on the 21st to Pales, the fecundating goddess of the flocks (-Parilia-), on the 23rd to Jupiter, as the protector of the vines and of the vats of the previous year's vintage which were first opened on this day (-Vinalia-), and on the 25th to the bad enemy of the crops, rust (-Robigus-: -Robigalia-). So after the completion of the work of the fields and the fortunate ingathering of their produce double festivals were celebrated in honour of the god and goddess of inbringing and harvest, Census (from -condere-) and Ops; the first, immediately after the completion of cutting (August 21, -Consualia-; August 25, -Opiconsiva-); and the second, in the middle of winter, when the blessings of the granary are especially manifest (December 15, -Consualia-; December