as dangerous to the stability of the Republic; the State could brook no rival in her affections: the devotion of Regulus[1] and the suppression of the Bacchanalia bear equal witness to a firm insistence on the control of personal emotion as a cardinal principle of Roman administration.[2] The apparently paradoxical and casuistical position assigned in the "De Natura Deorum" to Cotta, who believes in the national religion as a Roman while denying it as a philosopher, is sufficiently lucid and rational when regarded in the light
- ↑ The indignant phrases with which Horace scathes the degeneracy
of his own times in this respect clearly indicate the religious aspect
of the patriotic self-immolation of Regulus:—
"Milesne Crassi conjuge barbara
Turpis maritus vixit et hostium
(Proh curia inversique mores!)
Consenuit socerorum in armis
Sub rege Medo Marsus et Apulus
Anciliorum et nominis et togæ
Oblitus æternæque Vestæ
Incolumi Jove et urbe Roma?" (Od., iii. 5.) - ↑ Cf. Boissier: De la Religion Romaine, vol. i. p. 17.—" Non-*seulement la religion romaine n'encourage pas la dévotion, mais on peut dire qu'elle s'en méfie. C'est un peuple fait pour agir; la rêverie, la contemplation mystique lui sont étrangères et suspectes. Il est avant tout ami du calme, de l'ordre, de la regularité; tout ce qui excite et trouble les âmes lui déplaît." Boissier quotes as the remark of Servius on Georgics, 3. 456, the words, "Majores religionem totam in experientia collocabant;" but what Servius really wrote was, "Majores enim expugnantes religionem, totum in experientia collocabant," and he gives an apt reference to Cato's speech on the Catilinarian conspiracy as reported by Sallust:—"Non votis neque suppliciis muliebribus auxilia deorum parantur: vigilando, agendo, bene consulendo, prospere omnia cedunt." Propertius (iii. 22) boasts that Rome is free from the more extravagantly emotional legends of Greek mythology.
