Montesquieu, Dissertation on Politics in Roman Religion (Part 12)
Among the Egyptians, the priests formed a separate body, which was maintained at the public expense. From this sprang many disadvantages. All of the riches of the state were found to be swallowed up in a society of people who, always receiving and never providing, insensibly drew everything to themselves. The priests of Egypt, being thus likely to do nothing, all languished in an idleness from which they never departed except with the vices which it produced. They were disorganized, disturbed, and excessively forward; these qualities made them extremely dangerous. Finally, a body whose interests were violently separated from those of the state was a monster. And those who established it tossed into society the seed of discord and civil wars. It was not the same in Rome, where the priesthood had a civil charge. The dignities of the augurs, of the pontifex Maximus, were those of magistracies; those who took them on were members of the senate, and as a consequence, they did not have interests differing from those of the senatorial body. Far from preserving the superstition for oppressing the republic, they employed it usefully to sustain it. ‘In our city,’ says Cicero, ‘the kings and the magistrates who succeeded them have always had a double character, and have governed the state under the auspices of religion.’
Chez les Égyptiens, les prêtres faisaient un corps à part, qui était entretenu aux dépens du public ; de là naissaient plusieurs inconvénients : toutes les richesses de l’État se trouvaient englouties dans une société de gens qui, recevant toujours et ne rendant jamais, attiraient insensiblement tout à eux. Les prêtres d’Égypte, ainsi gagés pour ne rien faire, languissaient tous dans une oisiveté dont ils ne sortaient qu’avec les vices qu’elle produit : ils étaient brouillons, inquiets, entreprenants ; et ces qualités les rendaient extrêmement dangereux. Enfin, un corps dont les intérêts avaient été violemment séparés de ceux de l’État était un monstre ; et ceux qui l’avaient établi avaient jeté dans la société une semence de discorde et de guerres civiles. Il n’en était pas de même à Rome : on y avait fait de la prêtrise une charge civile ; les dignités d’augure, de grand pontife, étaient des magistratures : ceux qui en étaient revêtus étaient membres du sénat, et par conséquent n’avaient pas des intérêts différents de ceux de ce corps. Bien loin de se servir de la superstition pour opprimer la république, ils l’employaient utilement à la soutenir. « Dans notre ville, dit Cicéron, les rois et les magistrats qui leur ont succédé ont toujours eu un double caractère, et ont gouverné l’État sous les auspices de la religion. »
“…They will heap up a mound [sêma] on the broad Hellespont
And someone of the men who are born in the future may say
As he says over the wine-faced sea in his many-benched ship:
This is the marker [sêma] of a man who died long ago,
A man whom shining Hektor killed when he was at his best”
So someone someday will say. And my glory will never perish”
“After heaping up the mound [sêma] they returned. Then
Once they were well gathered they shared a fine feast
In the halls of the god-nourished king, Priam.
Thus they were completing the burial of horse-taming Hektor.”
“They quickly placed the bones in an empty trench and then
They covered it with great, well-fitted stones.
They rushed to heap up a marker [sêma], around which they set guards
In case the well-greaved Achaeans should attack too soon.”
“Don’t leave me unmourned, unburied when you turn around
And go back—so that I might not be a reason for the gods to rage—
But burn me with my weapons and everything which is mind
Then build a mound [sêma] for me on the shore of the grey sea,
For a pitiful man, and for those to come to learn of me.
Finish these things for me and then affix an oar onto my tomb,
The one I was rowing with when I was alive and with my companions”
I will speak to you an obvious sign [sêma] and it will not escape you.
Whenever some other traveler meets you and asks
Why you have a winnowing fan on your fine shoulder,
At that very point drive the well-shaped oar into the ground
In the fragment below, Simonides (late 6th century – mid 5th century BC) reimagines the myth of Danae put to sea in a chest with her child, Perseus, to prevent the boy growing up to kill his father.
The myth has many turns, but the fragment concentrates on the mother’s tenderness towards her child, and the contrast between her torment and his peaceful sleep.
Fr.543 (PMG)
When in the elegant box
blowing wind and roiling sea
knocked her flat with fear,
her cheeks not un-wet,
she put a loving arm around Perseus and said:
“O my child, I have nothing but suffering!
But you, you sleep.
With your nursling’s heart you slumber
in this joyless bronze-studded bark
(in its dim night, its inky gloom)
in which you were put to sea.
Thick spray over your hair
from passing waves
does not trouble you.
Nor does the cry of the wind.
You lie here in peace,
a beautiful face in a purple cloak.
But if the terrible were terrible to you,
you would lend my words
your little ear.
I bid you sleep, my little pup.
Let the sea sleep.
Let evil beyond measure sleep too.
And may some change of heart be evident,
father Zeus, from you.
If my prayer is presumptuous,
or far from just,
do forgive me.”
“What is exists whenever it does; what does not exist does not exist when it does not. Still, there’s no necessity to everything in existing or not existing. For it is not the same thing to say that everything that exists does exist and that everything exists by necessity when it occurs. Clearly, it is the same with things that do not exist.
The same argument obtains here as with contrary statements. Everything necessarily exists or does not exist and will be or will not be. But it it not possible for us to say which thing will necessarily happen. For example, I say that there will be a sea-battle tomorrow or maybe there won’t be. There’s certainly nothing to make it necessary that a sea-battle will happen tomorrow or not. But it is certainly necessary that it either happens or it doesn’t.”
“I will tell you everything clearly that you need to learn,
Without interweaving riddles, in a direct speech,
The right way to open one’s mouth to friends.
You see Prometheus, the one who gave mortals fire.”
“You hear what has happened. If you can,
Tell me the rest of my toils and don’t distract me
With false tales because you pity me
I think that manufactured lies are the most shameful plague.”
Montesquieu, Dissertation on Politics in Roman Religion (Part 11)
It is true that the Egyptian religion was always proscribed in Rome. That is because it was intolerant, and wanted to reign alone while establishing itself among the ruins of the others, in the way that the spirit of mildness and peace which ruled among the Romans was the real cause of the war which they made without a break. The senate decreed that the temples of the Egyptian divinities be torn down, and Valerius Maximus reports on this subject that Aemilius Paulus delivered the first blows, in order to encourage by his own example the working classes thunderstruck by superstitious fear.
But the priests of Serapis and Isis had in turn more zeal for establishing these ceremonies which were not held in Rome due to their proscription. Although Augustus, according to Dio, defended their practice in Rome, Agrippa, who governed the city in his absence, was obliged to defend it a second time. One can see in Tacitus and Suetonius the frequent stops which the senate was obliged to make to ban this worship from Rome.
It is necessary to note that the Romans confounded the Jews with the Egyptians, as we know that they confused the Christians with the Jews. These two religions were long regarded as two offshoots of the first, and took part with it in the hate, the contempt, and the persecution of the Romans. The same stops which abolished from Rome the Egyptian ceremonies always set the Jewish ceremonies with them, as it appears from Tacitus and Suetonius in the lives of Tiberius and Claudius. It is also clear that the historians never distinguished the worship of the Christians from that of the others. They had not come away from their error from the time of Hadrian, as it appears from a letter which that emperor wrote from Egypt to the consul Servianus: ‘All those who worship Serapis in Egypt are Christians, and all those who are called bishops are likewise attached to the worship of Serapis. There is no Jew, no prince of the synagogue, no samaritan, no priest of the Christians, no mathematician, no divine, no bather, who does not worship Serapis. The patriarch of the Jews himself worships Serapis and Christ with no distinction. These people have no other god than Serapis – that is, the God of the Christians, the Jews, and all people.’ Could one have any more confused ideas about these three religions, or could one mix them up more rudely?
Il est vrai que la religion égyptienne fut toujours proscrite à Rome : c’est qu’elle était intolérante, qu’elle voulait régner seule, et s’établir sur les débris des autres ; de manière que l’esprit de douceur et de paix qui régnait chez les Romains fut la véritable cause de la guerre qu’ils lui firent sans relâche. Le sénat ordonna d’abattre les temples des divinités égyptiennes ; et Valère Maxime rapporte, à ce sujet, qu’Émilius Paulus donna les premiers coups, afin d’encourager par son exemple les ouvriers frappés d’une crainte superstitieuse.
Mais les prêtres de Sérapis et d’Isis avaient encore plus de zèle pour établir ces cérémonies qu’on n’en avait à Rome pour les proscrire. Quoique Auguste, au rapport de Dion, en eût défendu l’exercice dans Rome, Agrippa, qui commandait dans la ville en son absence, fut obligé de le défendre une seconde fois. On peut voir, dans Tacite et dans Suétone, les fréquents arrêts que le sénat fut obligé de rendre pour bannir ce culte de Rome.
Il faut remarquer que les Romains confondirent les Juifs avec les Égyptiens, comme on sait qu’ils confondirent les chrétiens avec les juifs : ces deux religions furent longtemps regardées comme deux branches de la première, et partagèrent avec elle la haine, le mépris et la persécution des Romains. Les mêmes arrêts qui abolirent à Rome les cérémonies égyptiennes mettent toujours les cérémonies juives avec celles-ci, comme il parait par Tacite et par Suétone, dans les vies de Tibère et de Claude. Il est encore plus clair que les historiens n’ont jamais distingué le culte des chrétiens d’avec les autres. On n’était pas même revenu de cette erreur du temps d’Adrien comme il paraît par une lettre que cet empereur écrivit d’Égypte au consul Servianus: « Tous ceux qui, en Égypte, adorent Sérapis, sont chrétiens, et ceux même qu’on appelle évêques sont attachés au culte de Sérapis. Il n’y a point de juif, de prince de synagogue, de samaritain, de prêtre des chrétiens, de mathématicien, de devin, de baigneur, qui n’adore Sérapis. Le patriarche même des juifs adore indifféremment Sérapis et le Christ. Ces gens n’ont d’autre dieu que Sérapis ; c’est le dieu des chrétiens, des juifs et de tous les peuples. » Peut-on avoir des idées plus confuses de ces trois religions, et les confondre plus grossièrement ?
“The story goes that in Abydos there was a man who was afflicted with madness. He went into the theater and watched for many days as if there were actually people acting and applauded. When he had a respite from his affliction, he said that this was the most enjoyable time of his life.”
“Thrasyllos from the deme Aiksône endured an incredible and novel madness. For he left the city and went to the Peiraia and stayed there. He believed that all the ships that sailed in were his and he wrote down their names, checked the list when they left and rejoiced when they returned safely to the harbor again. He spent many years living with this sickness.
When his brother returned from Sicily, he took him to a doctor for treatment and he freed him from that sickness. But he often remembered the avocation of his sickness and used to say that he was never as happy as when he took pleasure at the sight of ships that weren’t his returning safely.”
Cristoforo Landino, Preface to Vergil in a Florentine Gymnasium (Part 5)
But, in order to finally return from such distant regions to Italy and Latium specifically, we should in no way think, my lords, that before Livy who (as Cicero has it) in the 410th year after the foundation of the republic first published the story that there was no poet among the Latins, when Marcus Cato in his Origins wrote that it was the most ancient custom for the notable deeds of excellent men to be sung to the tibia at dinner parties. Livy however, the truest historian of all, related that song was established in sacred ceremonies by Numa Pompilius. But I think that it has now been demonstrated by the most obvious arguments that there was no type of writers by which the poets were surpassed in antiquity.
But now, lest anything which we proposed be omitted, consider in the briefest account how much utility and pleasantness they offer both publicly and privately. But, since amidst such an abundance of material it is far more difficult to find the end than the beginning, I cannot find what I should say first, and what later. But in order to begin from that eloquence by whose strength nearly everything is ruled and which is rightly called “mind-bending”, who could be found with such a dull mind, that he doesn’t see how much spirit, how much splendor, how much dignity the poet offers to the orator? Who is ignorant of how sublime they are in the greatest matters, how moderated in the middling ones, how elegant in trifles? Let their exordia be attended to, let their narrations be read, their divisions be numbered, let their affirmations and refutations be weighed out carefully, and finally let their conclusions and epilogues not be passed over: you will understand, surely, that nothing could be found more accommodated to fostering good will, nothing more brief or clear for the purpose of narrating, nothing more indissoluble for division, nothing weightier in proof nor more forceful in refutation, nothing finally more abundant or ornate for delivering a conclusion. But all of these things pertain to oratorical arguments. Who handled philosophy itself more splendidly? Not only do poets select diverse passages from it and adorn them with a certain wondrous sweetness, but they even encompassed the whole business most totally, as we see among the Greeks Pittacus of Mytilene, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Empedocles, and many others from the family of the Pythagoreans; and among the Latins Lucretius, and Marcus Varro, whom Jerome called the most learned of all the Romans.
Sed ut quandoque ex tam longinquis regionibus in Italiam Latiumque redeamus, nullo pacto existimandum est, domini viri, ante Livium illum qui, ut est apud Ciceronem, decimo et quadringentesimo post conditam urbem anno primus fabulam edidit, nullum apud Latinos poetam fuisse, cum M. Cato in suis Originibus scriptum reliquerit vetustissimam fuisse consuetudinem, ut in conviviis egregia excellentium virorum facta ad tibiam canerentur. Livius autem, historicus omnium verissimus, a Numa Pompilio carmen in sacris cerimoniis institutum refert. Sed iam nullum esse scriptorum genus, a quo poetae antiquitate superentur, manifestissimis argumentationibus demonstratum esse arbitror.
Nunc vero, ne quid ex iis quae a nobis proposita sunt omittatur, quantum illi utilitatis, quantum etiam iocunditatis publice privatimque afferant, brevissimis accipite. Verum, quoniam in tanta rerum copia multo difficilius est finem quam initium invenire, quid prius, quid posterius dicam non reperio. Sed ut ab ea, cuius vi pene omnia reguntur quaeque iure «flexianima» appellata est, eloquentia exordiar, quis adeo hebeti erit ingenio, ut quantum spiritus, quantum splendoris, quantum dignitatis oratori poeta afferat non viderit? Quis quantum illi in maximis rebus sublimes, in mediocribus temperati, in humilibus elegantes sint ignoraverit? Attendantur exordia, legantur narrationes, enumerentur divisiones, pendantur diligentius confirmationes et confutationes, denique conclusiones epilogique non praetereantur: intelligetis profecto neque ad captandam benivolentiam accomodatius neque ad narrandum brevius et apertius neque ad dividendum absolutius neque ad confirmandum gravius neque ad confutandum vehementius neque postremo ad concludendum copiosius ornatiusque quicquam inveniri. Sed haec ad oratorias argumentationes pertinent. Philosophiam vero ipsam quis splendidius tractavit? Neque enim solum diversos ex ea locos decerpunt atque mira quadam suavitate condiunt poetae, verum etiam totam rem absolutissime perscripserunt, quemadmodum apud Graecos Pittacum Mytilenaeum, Xenophanem, Parmenidem, Empedoclem et plerosque alios ex Pythagoreorum familia, apud vero Latinos Lucretium et quem Romanorum omnium doctissimum Hieronymus appellavit M. Varronem videmus.
Montesquieu, Dissertation on Politics in Roman Religion (Part 10)
As the belief about the soul of the world was nearly universally received, and they saw each part of the universe as a living member in which this soul was spread, it appeared that it was permitted to adore all of these parts indifferently, and that worship should be as arbitrary as belief was.
And there is where sprang forth this spirit of tolerance and mildness which reigned in the pagan world. People did not need to guard themselves from persecution and to tear apart these or the other. All religions, all theologies were equally good: heresies, wars, and religious disputes were unknown. As long as one went to worship at a temple, each citizen was the grand pontiff in their own family. The Romans were in turn more tolerant than the Greeks, who always spoiled everything: everyone knows the unfortunate fate of Socrates.
Comme le dogme de l’âme du monde était presque universellement reçu, et que l’on regardait chaque partie de l’univers comme un membre vivant dans lequel cette âme était répandue, il semblait qu’il était permis d’adorer indifféremment toutes ces parties, et que le culte devait être arbitraire comme était le dogme.
Voilà d’où était né cet esprit de tolérance et de douceur qui régnait dans le monde païen : on n’avait garde de se persécuter et de se déchirer les uns les autres ; toutes les religions, toutes les théologies, y étaient également bonnes : les hérésies, les guerres et les disputes de religion y étaient inconnues ; pourvu qu’on allât adorer au temple, chaque citoyen était grand pontife dans sa famille.
Les Romains étaient encore plus tolérants que les Grecs, qui ont toujours gâté tout: chacun sait la malheureuse destinée de Socrate.
The 2020 Olympics, postponed because of COVID19, are due to start this week in Japan. They might be cancelled again, but the athletes have been training hard and Sarah E. Bond and I talked about the beginning, the end, and the tender parts of the Olympics with Jonathan Van Ness on his podcast Getting Curious. (Go here for a transcript). Here’s a short post from Sarah and me.
Pindar, Olympian 10. 26-61
“Zeus’ laws move me to sing of that exceptional contest-ground which Herakles
Set up by the burial place of Pelops along six altars
After he killed Kteatos, Poseidon’s perfect son
And Eurutos, because he was willfully
Trying to get his pay from arrogant and unwilling Augeas.
Herakles set an ambush in the underbrush near Kleônai and defeated the men near the road.
Once before the intolerable Moliones crushed
His army from Tirynth
When it was at rest in the valley of Elis.
Not long after that the king of the Epeians
Who deceived a friend
Saw his rich country and his own city
Laid low under the deep current
Of tireless fire and steel blows.
There’s no way to decline
A conflict with stronger people.
And that guy at last
Was found caught thanks to his own foolishness
And he didn’t escape sheer death.
Then Zeus’ bold son gathered the whole army and the spoils
In Pisa and created a sacred space for his father supreme.
He brought all of Altis around into an enclosure and marked it off.
He made a circle in the plain and a place for feasting,
Not failing to honor the stream Alpheus and the twelve high gods.
He named this the hill of Kronos because it was nameless before
When Oinomaus was king and it was crowned with damp snow.
The Fates stood nearby during this birth-rite
Alongside the only one who can test the true truth of things,
Time.
Then as Time moved forward, it revealed the clear truth of things—
How Herakles distributed the spoils of war
And made the best of them sacred;
And how he created the four-year festival with the first Olympic games and their triumphs.”
In Pindar’s 10th Olympian Ode, we find the traditional story for the creation of the first Olympic games. Herakles established them to honor his father and the rest of the gods during his various labors. Pindar’s poem, an epinician (a poem composed in honor of an athletic victory) is one of many that blends myth, history, and effusive praise–a heady mix wielded by sportswriters to this day.
The traditional date of the first Olympics is 776 BCE. The event was so important that its four-year cycle was the only calendar system shared by ancient Greek cities. (Each city-state had its own way of keeping time, typically a luni-solar system based around religious festivals, agrarian rites etc.)
But the Olympics were not the only Panhellenic games. Between the legendary founding of the Olympia and the Classical Age three other major games developed: the Nemean, Isthmian, and Pythian. These games had what you might expect: running, archery, boxing. They also had musical and choral competitions and some of the biggest events wouldn’t be found at today’s Olympics (the chariot games).
Athletic festivals like the Olympian games were part of a handful of cultural practices we now recognize as creating Panhellenic identities. Other include worship at the cult-sites of Delphi and Delos and Homeric and Hesiodic poems. The Games were an essential part of aristocratic culture–so much so that there are accounts of people considering the games a good place to find a spouse.
remains of temple at Olympia
Just as today, most of us would have no chance of competing in the games: they were for those healthy and wealthy enough to spend their time training and of blood noble enough to have the presumption to enter the contests. They were of such prestige in Athens that an Olympic victor was awarded with meals for life in the public dining hall.
The earliest games we have recorded in literature are in Homer’s Iliad where Achilles hosts funeral games in honor of Patroclus. Those games create an experimental space where the leading figures of the Achaeans could compete against one another without actual murder. Indeed, a close reading of Iliad 23 will show that Achilles, Menelaos, Antilokhos, and friends negotiate some of the same political tensions that causes the conflict in book 1.
Athletic contests in early Greece, then, developed as a ritualized kind of practice for war. Most of the events practiced–running, wrestling, javelin throwing–are those that aristocrats would have practiced in preparation for war. But instead of fighting each other to the death, they struggled over honor on the field. Probably naked. Probably cheating and scrabbling for every advantage just like today.
Note on Pindar’s 12th Olympic Ode, 15th century (Harley MS 1752, f. 126r) (Image via the British Library).
The traditional date for the last ancient Olympic games is 393 CE—even if ancient historians such as David Potter (2011) and Sofie Remijsen (2015) have questioned the reality of this rather synthetic date.They place the final games later into the reign of the emperor Theodosius II (r. 408-450 CE). In the years prior to the concluding competition, the Roman emperor Theodosius I, a Nicene Christian born in Hispania, had undertaken sweeping legislation and withheld state funds in order to quell traditional Roman religio and address heresies within the empire. The closing of the famed festival games held in honor of Zeus may have been but one move in a broader agenda which promoted Nicene Christianity while suppressing spaces, rituals, and people labeled as either pagan or heretical. Or the games may have simply petered out and fallen victim to the institutional and financial shifts at play in the late Roman Mediterranean.
In 380, the “Edict of Thessalonica” (also known as Cunctos populos; CTh 16.1.2 trans. Jacobs) was directed predominantly at the heretics of Constantinople. It took on a more wide-ranging significance defining Nicene Christianity as the “official” faith of the Roman Empire with the compiling of the Theodosian Code in 436. However, other imperial actions did signal attempts to literally and figuratively snuff out paganism. In 391, the eternal flame of Vesta in Rome was extinguished and numerous laws banned sacrifices or withheld money from traditional religious cults. As Remijsen notes, the closing of Greek athletic festivals in Late Antiquity was not just religiously motivated, but also influenced by financial, institutional, and political aims. Agonistic budgets were high and the shift to a more centralized financial scheme meant athletic festivals could not be paid for.
Fragment of a Document and List of Olympic Victors (P.Oxy. XXXIII 2381, TM 59764, LDAB 868, MP3 2188, 3rdC CE) (Image via the British Library).
Fragment of a Document and List of Olympic Victors (P.Oxy. XXXIII 2381, TM 59764, LDAB 868, MP3 2188, 3rdC CE) (Image via the British Library).
Whatever the motives for the demise of the Olympic games in Late Antiquity, the historic festival has left behind a wealth of literature, papyri, inscriptions, art, and archaeological remains that continue to grip the imagination of the modern public since the reinstitution of the games in 1896. The Olympics can and have been used for nefarious purposes (e.g. the Berlin Olympics of 1936 and Leni Reifenstahl’s propaganda film Olympia). However, the modern Olympics can also nudge us to reinvestigate the origins and evidence for the Archaic games.
