centuries (sex suffragia) and twelve younger ones-appear to have been formed out of the three tribes, so that it may be presumed that the division of the Roman people into three parts had reference to the military organisation The oldest popular assembly of the Romans therefore, as well as the later one of the centuries, had for its basis the organisation, into an army, of the men capable of bearing arms.1

CHAP.
XIII.

senate.

No state of Greece or of Italy could dispense with a The select council of elders, which, on account of the unwieldy character of large popular assemblies, was in reality called upon to conduct the government. The Roman senate consisted, as alleged, in the regal period, of three hundred members. These, the real, if not the acknowledged, representatives of the people, the heads of the first families, and therefore appropriately called Patres, i.e. Fathers, were chosen by the king for life, and exercised no doubt a decided influence on his policy.

In the time of the republic the senate was the centre The senate of political life. In the regal period its power was pro- regal during the bably less, considering that the executive was in the hands period. not of annually-changing magistrates like the consuls, but of princes elected for life. Unimportant, however, it could not have been, as the crown was not hereditary, and the choice of each new king lay de facto in the hands of the senate.2

office.

In the absence of trustworthy traditions regarding the The kingly regal period, it is not possible to form a clear view of the position and functions of the kings. It may, however, be assumed with certainty, that, at the time of the establishment of the republic, the kingly power continued in the consulship, and was only lessened by being divided

In the time of the republic the assembly of curiae was antiquated and was preserved merely for the transaction of formal business, especially of a religious character. Yet it retained a very material right, that of conferring on the consuls by the lex curiata de imperio the chief military and judicial power. This is explained by the circumstance that the curiæ originally were the assembly of the armed people, in fact the Roman army.

2 On the Interreges, see p. 28, and Schwegler, Röm. Gesch., i. 656 ff.

BOOK

I.

between two colleagues, and by the limitation of the
office to one year. This diminution, however, was very
important. The king, who had neither to apprehend any
interference from a colleague, nor to look forward to the
time when he would be obliged to retire into private life
and give an account of his acts, stood invested with a
power which placed all the resources of the people at his
disposal, if he understood how to make their interests his
own. Still we must not think of him as of an Asiatic
despot, placed by the slavish submission of his subjects
above the control of all law, or as a Greek tyrant, trampling
on the established liberties of his country, and ruling by
sheer force and violence in defiance of law and justice.
Both these forms of absolute power were made impossible
in Rome by the strictly legal mode of electing the sovereign,
which excluded hereditary right on the one side and
arbitrary assumption of it on the other. The Roman
kings were placed under the authority of the laws, and
were bound by the terms of a contract with their people,
which, if not formally expressed in words, was fully im-
plied and understood. The consent of the gods to the
election of a king, given in the solemn auspices, the volun-
tary homage on the part of the citizens (the lex curiata de
imperio), the obedience of the citizen-army, were given
to the king only on condition that he did not abuse the
power intrusted to him. Moreover, an aristocracy like
that of the Roman patricians was incompatible with un-
limited kingly power. The Romans were formed by nature
to be governed not by arbitrary will, but by laws. For
their guidance in all the incidents of social and political
life they elaborated legal maxims and enforced them on
all contracting parties; nay, even their intercourse with
the gods was not an unconditional service, no simple sub-
jection, but a performance of certain services on the part
of men for which a corresponding service on the part of
the gods was claimed as a right. Accordingly, it must be
presumed, even without direct evidence, that the Roman
kings had to rule according to law and justice, and not by

arbitrary will.1 As high priests they were mediators between the gods and men, just as every father of a family was in his own house; as judges they decided on important cases of dispute and breaches of the peace, either personally or by deputies, according to unwritten but fixed principles of law; as commanders of the armed citizens, they conducted the wars, which had been previously discussed by the elders and determined on by the people.

CHAP.

XIII.

of the

As a sign of their supreme military and judicial power Legislative over life and death, the Roman kings had a retinue of powers lictors with bundles of rods and axes, and in every respect kings. they exhibited royal pomp before the people. Much has been said respecting the personal legislation of the kings: how Romulus organised the state, how Numa established the religion and introduced other parts of public law; but none of these reports are borne out by satisfactory evidence. They were invented to account for the origin of institutions, and cannot prove that new principles of public or private law could be introduced by the kings without the consent of the senate and the people.

of the

Perhaps the most important limitation of the kingly Working power was exercised through the forms which religion sup- Roman plied to the ruling aristocracy. Without the divine sanc- religion. tion no important act could be undertaken in private life. It was, of course, still more important for all public measures to obtain the divine consent. But the access to the gods through the auguries was open to the body of patricians. The possession of the auspices was their birthright; it was, for political purposes, exercised in their behalf by priests and augurs, who were members of their body, and/ chosen for life as well as the kings. It would, therefore, have been no easy matter for a Roman king to emancipate himself from the restraints which the patricians were able to put upon him through the national religion.

The Romans were an eminently religious people. Their Character minds were penetrated by religious feelings, and their con

On Rubino's views of a theocratic absolutism of the Roman kings see Schwegler, Röm. Gesch., i. 649 ff.

of the Roman

religion.

BOOK

I.

Roman

idens of

sciences bound up in religious duties. This was indicated by the name itself, for religio meant spiritual bondage; | it implied pangs of conscience and terror of the divine wrath. It exhibited itself in a conscientious attention to all observances prescribed in the service of the gods, in the right interpretation of the divine will as revealed by extraordinary natural phenomena, in the offerings, supplications, prayers, and purifications which the priests prescribed. The Romans saw everywhere, and in all things, the agency and direction of the gods. The whole of nature was to them pervaded by divine power. The heavens, the earth, the water-all things swarmed with divine beings. Every change in nature-growth, decay, and death-was the work of some deity. Wherever man turned, whatever he undertook, he was everywhere controlled by the Deity, in the whole course of his life, from the cradle to the grave.

But the Romans had only an abstract conception of the the gods. Deity; they did not see it revealed in a form palpable to the senses, and within reach of human sympathies. To them the gods were only mysterious spiritual beings without human forms, without human feelings and impulses, without human virtues or weaknesses. They emerged from the all-surrounding and all-pervading spiritual world to influence human life, like the unfeeling elements of nature; and before the eye of man had caught their form, and the heart had drawn near to them, they retired from sight and contact, to merge in the godhead of the universe, like a wave in the ocean.

The Roman religion

not mythological.

Roman religion, therefore, has gods, but no mythology. Though the divine beings were conceived as male or female, they did not join in marriage or beget children. They did not live together like the Greek gods in Olympus, after the manner of men; they had no intercourse with mortals. No genuine Roman legend tells of any race of nobles sprung from the gods; no oracle uttered a divine revelation by the mouth of inspired prophets. For the inspiration of prophecy was substituted the dry formal

XIII.

science of augury, which aims at nothing but the discovery CHAP. of the simple assent or dissent of the gods, by means of the anxious observation and almost mechanical interpretation of a strictly defined set of phenomena, and which gave no hint, no warning, no advice, as a sign of the divine sympathy in the affairs of men.

images in

Such an unimaginative conception of the Deity could Absence of not create ideal pictures or statues of the gods. A simple the spear, even a rough stone sufficed as a symbol; a conse- worship of the gods. crated space, a sacrificial hearth, as temple or altar. For 170 years, it is said, Rome knew no religious images.' Afterwards, when the Romans had learnt from the Etruscans to represent the gods as men after the Greek fashion, the old views and ideas still remained in the hearts of the people. The gods transplanted from Greece took no root in the minds of the Roman people. They remained external ornaments, recommended by Greek literature, by foreign influence, by fashion, by love of show; and these external additions gathered around the kernel of the Roman religion, without affecting or transforming its inmost core. The Greek gods never were truly domesticated in Rome. At the household hearth the Lares and Penates continued to be worshipped, their presence was only dimly seen in the glowing ashes, and always filled the heart with secret

awe.

accounting

for the

Roman

Thus the Roman people could not create a national Causes epic. No Roman Homer ever sang the heroic deeds of bygone generations. With all the pride of ancestry want of which animated the Romans, with all their respect for epic tradition and the past, the Romans never had heroic songs, poetry. because they lacked the most important element of poetic imagination. When they extolled their ancestors, they never rose beyond a jejune enumeration of their deeds, honours, and virtues, just as they could draw up only dry lists of the powers, peculiarities, and rites due to the gods 2 and were never inspired to real religious poetry. Religion,

1 Varro in St. Augustine's Civit. Dei, iv. 31.

* This is the meaning of Indigitamenta. See Preller, Röm. Mythologie, p. 119.