based upon a recognition that the actual demands of practical life were of greater importance than the maintenance of a rigid conformity to the letter of religious precepts. Virgil, who was a participant in the work of religious reform inaugurated by Augustus, and who everywhere breathes a spirit of the most careful reverence towards the ancient traditions of the national faith, gives emphatic expression to this view of the dominant claims of practical life, and of the tolerant attitude which Religion assumes with regard to them:—
"Quippe etiam festis quædam exercere diebus
Fas et jura sinunt; rivos deducere nulla
Relligio vetuit, segeti prætendere sæpem,
Insidias avibus moliri, incendere vepres,
Balantumque gregem fluvio mersare salubri."[1]
This recognition of the principle that Duty has claims which even Religion must concede is prominently written on every page of Roman History. It indicates the operation, in one direction, of that influence of Reason on Religion which, in another direction, leads
- [Footnote: fieri in senatu solet, faciendum ego in philosophia quoque existimo.
Quum censuit aliquis, quod ex parte mihi placeat, jubeo illum dividere sententiam, et sequor."—For a summary of interesting examples of the manner in which this spirit of compromise worked out in practical religious questions, see Boissier, pp. 22, sqq.]
- ↑ Virgil: Georgics, 1. 268-272.—Cf. the note of Servius on this
passage: "Scimus necessitati religionem cedere." On the general
character of Roman Religion, cf. Constant de Rebecque: Du Polythéisme
Romain.—"On dirait que les dieux ont abjuré les erreurs d'une
jeunesse fougueuse pour se livrer aux occupations de l'âge mûr. La
religion de Rome est l'âge mûr des dieux, comme l'histoire de Rome
est la maturité de l'espèce humaine."
