SOURCE: "The Religious Life of Tibullus as Reflected in His Elegies," The Classical Weekly, Vol. XXII, No. 16, Whole No. 600 February 25, 1929, pp. 121-26.

[In the following essay, Burriss outlines Tibullus's religious beliefs and describes them as practical in nature and unsophisticated.]

Tibullus was a poet, and so his attitude toward the gods is colored by the fancy of the poet.¹ Against this we must set the fact that he was a farmer who knew at first hand the ritual of the country festival, and that he was reverent toward the gods of his country.

That he was an unsophisticated believer in the gods is evident; this is strange in view of the fact that he lived in an age when scepticism was rampant among cultured people. When his duties called him into the fields, he would pause in worship at a garlanded tree trunk or an ancient boundary stone (1.1.11-14), even as in our day an Italian or a French peasant will occasionally stop his work to worship at a wayside shrine. His attitude toward the gods is well illustrated by his statement (1.2.79-86) that, if he has been guilty of violating the divinity of Venus, or if he has committed any act of sacrilege, he will gladly fling himself on the ground before her temple, kiss its threshold, and beat his head against its door-post.

'I sing of the country-side and its gods', he writes (2.1.37). It is on the gods of the farmer and the home—the Genius, the Lares and the Penates, Ceres, Bacchus—that his affection is centered; they are the gods whom he thanks for the blessings of life.

Tibullus everywhere mentions the Lares with affection. About their feet he used to run as a child (1.10.15-16), protected by their beneficent influence, though they were made merely of rough wood. It was quite natural for a child to grow with great affection for the gods of his childhood, because of the pleasant association of the home with them, whether or not the coming of manhood and reason brought scepticism with it. In the case of Tibullus, however, there seems to have been no tincture of disbelief, save only in the case of foreign gods, Isis, for example, of whom his sweetheart Delia was a devotee. In 1.1.19-24 the Lares are represented in their original function as guardian spirits of the farm. A lamb is offered to them in behalf of his modest patch of ground, and the youth cry out, 'Hurrah! Grant good harvests and good wine'. Tibullus, if cured of his illness in far-off Phaeacia, will offer incense to the Penates and to the ancient Lar (1.3.33-34). He pleads with the Lares (1.10.15-18) to save him in war. If they shall turn aside the weapons of war, Tibullus, clad in festive dress, will offer a pig, the regular sacrifice to the Lares. The intimate association of the Lares with Tibullus's personal life extends to his love affairs, for he writes (2.4.53-54), 'Why, even if she should order me to sell my ancestral home, Lares, go up for sale under the auctioneer's authority'.

The Lares, generally called 'household gods', were, in the form of their earliest worship, guardian spirits of the adjacent farms. They were then worshipped yearly, at some time between December 17 and January 5, at the compita, the spot where adjoining farms met. In historical times, the Lares Familiares became associated with the worship of the family in the house where, every morning, and again before dinner, sacrifice, accompanied with prayer, was made to them.

A family celebration in the ancient Roman home was the worship of the Genius of the pater familias. The Genius was the male principle in life; the corresponding female principle was called Juno. The Genius was born with man, and accompanied him through life as a kind of guardian angel. The worship of the Genius, like that of the Lares and the Penates, was attended with a feeling of affection on the part of Tibullus. In 1.7. 49-52 Tibullus bids Osiris, a divinity of his sweetheart Delia, come to the birthday feast of Messalla, the patron of Tibullus: play, dance, wine, garlands, anointed hair, offerings of incense, sacred cakes made with honey mark the feast. Tibullus's wish for Messalla is that he may have offspring to cheer his declining years. A birthday poem (2.2), addressed to Cornutus, begins with the usual ritualistic command for silence. Incense and Arabian perfumes are burned; the Genius is commanded to attend in person, adorned with garlands and with temples drenched with nard. Sacrificial cakes and unmixed wine are offered. Whatever wish Cornutus shall make, that his Genius is bound to grant. Tibullus concludes the elegy with a prayer that the Genius shall bring children to Cornutus and his wife. Only bloodless sacrifices could be made to the Genius, a fact which attests the great antiquity of the rite. In praying to the Genius, one touched his own forehead.

Tibullus describes in some detail two country festivals, the Parilia and the Ambarvalia.

Pales was an ancient Italian divinity of shepherds, a deity of uncertain sex, worshipped at the Parilia, both in the name of the State and in that of the family, in the country as well as in the city. In 2.5.87-106 Tibullus describes in part the rural festival which took place on April 21, the traditional date of the founding of the city of Rome. The account given by Tibullus must be supplemented by descriptions found in other authors, notably Ovid (Fasti 4.735-782) and Propertius (4.4.74-78).

In the twilight of the morning, the shepherds cleansed their folds and sprinkled both sheep and folds with purificatory waters. They adorned the folds with sprays, hanging long garlands on the doors. Sulphur was burned to purify the flocks, while olive and laurel sprays, with pine and juniper wood, were thrown into the fire, presumably the hearth of the farm-house. These would crackle if the omens were favorable. Baskets of millet and millet cakes, together with milk, were offered to Pales, whose wooden statue, standing near the farm-house, seems to have been splashed with milk (1.2.48). A feast followed in which the shepherds and the god took part. The shepherds then prayed to Pales to keep off evil influences—wolves, disease, famine—, and to bring good influences to bear—water, food, health; they repeated the prayer three times, facing the east, while they cleansed their hands in morning dew. The people drank a mixture called sapa, made of wine boiled until it was thick and then mixed with milk. After this the farmer, his family, and his flocks leaped through bonfires made of straw, a rite which was believed to make women and flocks prolific. The worshippers lay about on the grass eating and drinking. A similar ceremony, more complicated in its details, took place in the city.

That this rite harks back to primitive times is evident from the nature of its elements; milk was commonly used by witches in historical times. The mixing of wine and milk in brewing sapa shows the newer and the older strata. Jumping through fire is a magic rite which has parallels among ancient peoples as well as among savages of our own day.

Tibullus, in 2.1, describes the festival of the Ambarvalia; this description, too, needs supplementing. The Ambarvalia was an ancient festival, held usually in May, for the purification of the crops and the cattle. According to Tibullus, Bacchus and Ceres were the divinities concerned. But, as we shall see, Mars was originally the god involved; only later, when Mars came to be considered the god par excellence of war, did Ceres and Bacchus usurp his place. On this day farmer and flocks rested from their toils. No woman might spin wool: spinning would have had a tangling influence on the crops. Nor could anyone participate in the rites who had indulged in sexual intercourse the night before. Olive sprays adorned the hair of the people, who were clad in spotless white. Drinking and carousing characterized the day.

There was a lustration of the farm. This consisted of a procession around its bounds (suovetaurilia), of a pig, a sheep, and a bull driven by a throng of people wearing garlands, chanting, and waving olive branches. The procession made a circuit of the farm three times, at the conclusion of which the sacrifice of the suovetaurilia was made to Mars, with offering of wine, and with prayer to Janus and Jupiter. These elements in the rite we know from Cato, De Agricultura (141. 1-3). Cato has also recorded the actual words used in the prayer. The prayer as given by Tibullus (2.1.17-20) is similar in its essence to that recorded by Cato², but it is shorter, and its form is necessarily determined by the exigencies of the elegiac couplet. First, silence is enjoined, and then the prayer follows: 'Ancestral gods, we purify the fields, we purify the farmers. Do you drive evils from the bounds of our farms. Let not the planted field mock the harvest with disappointing blades. Nor let the lamb, slower than they, fear the swift wolves'. After the prayer the entrails of the sacrificial victims are examined for omens.

Another ancient goddess of the farmer, Ceres, receives frequent mention in Tibullus. In 1.1.15 he writes, 'Yellow-tressed Ceres, may you have a spiky garland from my field to hang before the doors of your temple'. We have seen that, in the Ambarvalia, Ceres had usurped the place of the god Mars (2.1.4) and that Tibullus there invoked Ceres, along with Bacchus, in prayer. It would seem, then, that Ceres was a very ancient divinity of the productive forces of nature, who had long been forgotten by Cato's day, and that, with the introduction of the Greek goddess Demeter, the name of the ancient Roman deity corresponding to Demeter was revived. Hence Ceres appears in the prayer of Tibullus, but not in that of Cato. At any rate, in later times, Ceres had become completely identified with the Greek goddess of grain, Demeter.

The sex of the ancient deity Ceres, as of Pales, is indeterminate. Scholars are agreed that the name is etymologically connected with creare. It may be that Ceres, like Tellus, is really Dea Dia, who had so large a part in the ritual of the Arval Brothers. This would explain the absence of the name in their ancient hymn, where we should most naturally expect to find it.

The Cerealia, which fell on April 19, was in the main a Greek festival; but there was undoubtedly an underlying element of genuine Roman religion, magic in character, of which the fox ritual may have been a reminiscence. At this festival in the city, fire brands were tied to the tails of foxes, which were then turned loose in the Circus Maximus. No satisfactory explanation of this rite has been forthcoming, but it is undoubtedly a survival of the age of magic; perhaps the rite was intended to ward off the parching heat of the sun during the summer. If this is so, the worshippers were following the well-known principle of 'sympathy', or 'sympathetic magic'. A statement in Ovid, Fasti 1.349-350, that Ceres was the first to receive the sacrifice of an animal, points to extreme antiquity, when the taboo on blood in the age of magic would have forbidden blood sacrifice.

We have abundant evidence that Tibullus believed in magic and that he consulted sagae, women who were notorious go-betweens in love affairs in antiquity, and carried on a profitable trade in love potions and in performing acts of magic for lovers and for others who had need of their arts. Tibullus relates (1.2.41-62) how he consulted one of these witches and had actually seen her draw stars down from heaven. He assigns to this witch all the usual feats of the saga: she reverses the courses of rivers, lures forth the spirits of the dead, splits the ground with her incantations that the spirits may hear her magic words, calls forth bones from the embers of the funeral pyre, sprinkles them with milk and bids them return to earth again, drives clouds from the sky, and gathers snow in the summer sky. She alone has tamed the hounds of Hecate. This witch composed a cantus for Tibullus, to be chanted three times, after which he had to spit: then Delia's husband would not believe the gossip about her and Tibullus, though he would believe gossip about any other lovers of Delia. Tibullus asks (59), 'Why should I believe ?', and he gives as his reason (59-62), 'Certainly she was the same one who said that she could unravel my love by her spells and herbs. She purified me with torches, and in the clear night a dark victim fell to the gods of magic'.

Again, in 1.5.1-20, Tibullus wrestles with grief at his separation from Delia, and pleads for a reconciliation. He tells how, after the witch had recited her incantation, he had cleansed Delia with burning sulphur; it was he who had robbed her delirious dreams of their power to harm, by offering sacred meal three times. Tibullus, with his head swathed in wool and with loosened tunic, had nine times made vows to Trivia in the silence of the night. All these vows had been paid, yet, he says (17), '…now another enjoys my love'.

Tibullus tried to console himself for the loss of Delia with another mistress, but, as soon as he thought of Delia, his new love vanished (1.5.40). This woman, scorned by Tibullus, taxed Delia with familiarity with the black arts. In the same elegy Tibullus throws into the teeth of the woman his bitterest curses (1.5.49-56): he prays that she may eat food drenched in blood, that evil spirits may forever hover about her head, complaining of their fate, that a screech owl may dole forth his mournful notes from the roof of her house, that she herself, maddened with hunger, may be compelled to prowl among the graves for edible grasses, and for bones which ravenous wolves have left behind, and that she may run naked through the streets of the town, pursued by a pack of hounds.

Again, in 1.8.17-23 he complains that an old beldame has bewitched the boy Marathus. Tibullus takes this opportunity to recount additional feats of witches, transferring crops from one field to another, a rite of which cognizance was taken in the Laws of the Twelve Tables, staying the course of snakes, and drawing the moon down from the sky.

There is a suggestion that Tibullus himself may have had recourse to love potions (pocula amatoria); in 2.4. 55-60 we read that, if Nemesis shall only condescend to look with favor on him, he will gladly drink all the potions that Circe or Medea or Thessaly has produced.

That Tibullus credited monitions from the gods is apparent from 1.3.16-20. There, in seeking reasons for lingering longer with Delia, instead of setting out at once for the East, he tells us, 'I offered as a pretext either unlucky birds or omens, or that the holy day of Saturn held me back. How often, when I was about to start on my journey, did I say that my stumbling at the gate gave signs of trouble'. Tibullus, further, credulously recites (2.5.67-78) the signs which, so the Sibyl foretold, would appear at the assassination of Julius Caesar, the comet, the shower of stones, the clash of arms and the blare of trumpets heard in the sacred groves, the weeping statues of the gods, and the eclipse of the sun.

Tibullus seems to have had recourse to divination by lots. Before he set out for Phaeacia, Delia three times drew lots, which were interpreted favorably by a boy (1.3.11-12). The employment of boys in antiquity in divination is well attested³; but the usual procedure was for the boy to draw the lots, not to interpret them.

In a poem (2.5) written in celebration of the entrance of Messalinus into the Collegium which had control of the Sibylline Books Tibullus expresses his faith in augurs, haruspices, and sibyls.

While ill on the island of Phaeacia, Tibullus prays (1.3.51-56) to Jupiter to spare him in his illness, which, he believes, has been caused by Jupiter's anger; he justifies himself in so praying on the ground that he is not a perjurer and that he has not uttered unholy words against the gods.

It was a common belief among the ancients that Jupiter did not hold lovers to their oaths. Hence the words of Priapus to Tibullus (1.4.21-24), 'Fear not to swear. The perjuries of love, being invalid, the winds carry over land and over the surface of the deep. Great thanks to Jove! … '

Jupiter, as the rain-maker (Pluvius), is mentioned for the first time in literature in Tibullus 1.7.26. This fact seems strange in view of the prevalent use in modern times of the expression Jupiter Pluvius. The worship of Jupiter as the rain god is a survival of the age of magic. Outside the Porta Capena, in the vicinity of the Temple of Mars, reposed a stone, perhaps a hollow meteorite, called the lapis manalis. When crops were suffering from lack of rain, the Pontifices, accompanied by the magistrates and their lictors, dragged the stone into the city to the altar of Jupiter Elicius on the Aventine. Here they drenched it with water, or (if it was hollow) filled it to overflowing—a rite calculated, by sympathetic magic, to cause the heavens to overflow. Petronius (44) represents women barefoot, with flowing hair, climbing the Clivus to the Capitol to petition Jupiter for rain. The god answered their plea, and the women went home as wet as mice⁴. We see, then, that from the earliest times Jupiter had been associated with rain-making; the non-appearance of the epithet Pluvius may be accounted for by the fact that rain-making rites were quasi-magic ceremonies, and hence outside the pale of the Roman State religion.

In Tibullus's elegies, Mars is represented as a fully developed god of war. We have seen that he had no part in the rites of the Ambarvalia, as described by Tibullus, whereas in Cato's day he occupied first place in those rites. When Tibullus, who detests war, wants to be protected, he prays, not to Mars, but to his beloved Lares (1.10.15-18); he leaves prayers to Mars to the man who desires to be bold in battle (1.10.29-32).

Vulcan, as the destructive power of fire, is mentioned once (1.9.49-50); Tibullus prays that Vulcan may destroy the verses which he has composed to Marathus. In Roman religion, Vesta represented fire as a beneficent numen, Vulcan represented destructve fire. The former developed into a mighty goddess, but Vulcan seems to have been neglected, at least so far as the formal State religion was concerned.

Delia's husband suspected Tibullus of a liaison with his wife. Tibullus (1.6.15-22) gives some advice to the husband, warning him especially to see to it that Delia shall not frequent the rites of Bona Dea. The fact that men were forbidden to attend these rites may have led them to doubt their moral purity. We need only recall the notorious case of Clodius in the time of Cicero to indicate the possibilities of scandal in connection with them.

Tibullus consulted the bloody goddess Bellona, whose priestess disclosed to him that, if anyone should touch Delia, his fortunes would 'glide away even as the blood from my wound and as the ashes are dispelled by the winds'. Tibullus describes the rites (1.6.43-54). The priestess has no fear of flame or lash. She cuts her flesh with an ax and sprinkles the goddess with the blood. Her breasts are wounded, and a spit, thrust through her flesh, projects from her side. She chants and prophesies the while. The principle of sympathetic magic here involved is characteristic of magic rites among all peoples and in all ages; its presence here attests the great antiquity of the rite.

Of the ancient goddess of war, Bellona, little is known. June 3 was sacred to her. In later times she became completely identified with the Cappadocian M. The Temple of Bellona was vowed by the consul Appius Claudius Caecus, in 296 B. C. In front of the temple stood the Columna Bellica, over which the Fetial cast his sacred spear in the ritual of declaring war on a foreign foe; in the temple foreign ambassadors and generals, who were forbidden to enter the sacred pomerium, were received. Generals, too, presented their claims to a triumph in this temple, for they were not allowed to enter the city. During the Empire, there was a Temple of Bellona Pulvinaris, in reality the Cappadocian goddess M, who, as said above, had completely displaced Bellona. It appears that knowledge of M was gained by the soldiers who served in the wars against Mithridates. It was doubtless in the Temple of Bellona Pulvinaris that Tibullus consulted the priestess.

Diana and Minerva are mentioned in 1.4.25-26 as divinities by whom Priapus permits Tibullus to swear, in connection with his love for Marathus, 'by the arrows of Diana and the hair of Minerva'. It was common thus to swear by the attributes of a divinity; in this case it is particularly apposite, because Diana and Minerva, being maiden goddesses, would normally have scant sympathy for lovers who foreswore themselves. Jupiter, of course, would not hold lovers to their promises; Priapus assures Tibullus, by implication, that even Diana and Minerva will not hold Tibullus to his oaths.

Venus was originally an old Italian goddess of gardens and of vineyards. It is the Greek Aphrodite masquerading under the name of Venus that Tibullus mentions so often. Venus will aid Delia in evading those who are watching her (1.2.15-16). Venus causes the secret affairs of lovers to remain hidden (1.2.34). The telltale in love affairs will find that Venus is 'a daughter of blood and of consuming seas' (1.2.39-40). Tibullus fears that his woes in love are due to some offense to Venus, for which he is paying the penalty (1.2.79-80). Venus places 'bonds' about the neck of the old man (1.2.90). Tibullus is always a slave to Venus (1.1.97). Venus will lead Tibullus to Elysian fields (1.3.57-58). She rages when one who has sworn in her name breaks his word (1.5.58). She is bitter toward the faithless in love (1.6.84). Venus is even associated in Tibullus's mind with magic (1.8.5-6): 'Venus herself, having bound my arms with magic knot, has taught me many a lesson with scourge on scourge'. Venus punishes 'harsh deeds' on the part of the lover (1.8.28). She always finds a way for lovers to attain the objects of their desires (1.8.35). The person who allows money to play a part in determining his love affairs will find Venus bitter and hard (1.9.19-20). Venus will cause the faithless lover to weep, when his place is usurped by another; and Tibullus will hang up a palm spray of gold to Venus with an inscription recording his joy over the faithless lover's punishment (1.9.81-84). In order to obtain the desired object of his love Tibullus will even resort to sacrilege and will steal the votive offerings hanging in the temples; the Temple of Venus will be the first to be plundered (2.4.23-26).

Phoebus is invoked (2.5), in the elegy celebrating the entrance of Messalinus into the Quindecimviri Sacris Faciundis, a collegium which had control of innovations in the State religion, under the supervision of the Pontifices. Apollo himself, with brows wreathed with laurel, wearing robes set apart for the occasion, and with his hair properly dressed, is to come with lyre and song to the heaped-up altar. He is the god of prophecy; the augur, the haruspex, the drawers of lots derive their powers from him. Inspired by the god, the Sibyl, always faithful in her prophecies to the Romans, sings of what is to be. Phoebus is to instruct Messalinus in the lore of the Sibyl. The other references to Phoebus are purely poetical. Writing of his thraldom in love, Tibullus says (2.4.13): '…neither elegies nor Apollo, the author of song, are of avail'. Bacchus and Phoebus have youth everlasting (1.4.37). Tibullus mentions the story of Apollo and Admetus, asserting therein that Apollo's music and herbs are unable to cure him (2.3.11-14). Even in the occasional poem celebrating Messalinus, Tibullus cannot forget his love, and he addresses Apollo thus (2.5.105-106), 'Phoebus, with thy permission, let bow, let arrows perish, provided Love, unarmed, wander about the earth'.

Apollo, the Greek god of prophecy, of healing, of music, dancing and poetry, of youth and athletics, the protector of crops and herbs, was introduced into Rome at a very early date, in all probability before the introduction of the Sibylline Books. This introduction took place not earlier than 509 B. C., and not later than 496 B. c. The books were brought from Cumae, according to the tradition, in the time of Tarquinius Superbus. The first authentic record of their being used for religious innovations was in 399 B. C., when there was a plague in Rome following a bitter winter. A result was the introduction of the Greek lectisternium, which consisted of exhibiting to the whole populace for eight days on a couch Apollo with Latona, Diana with Hercules, and Mercury with Neptune, with a feast spread out before them. These deities were invoked to expel the pestilence. The object of the innovation was to divert the minds of the people from their sufferings. It marked a definite introduction of the emotional element into a religion which was becoming moribund, and, in a sense, it marked also a degeneration of the Roman ideas of divinity from spirits to humanized gods. The oldest form of the worship of Apollo was connected with an Apollinare, either a grove or an altar, just west of the Capitol, in the Flaminian Meadows. On this spot, in 431 B. C., there was erected a temple which had been vowed two years previously in a time of pestilence. The cult title of Apollo in this center of worship was Medicus. We know that the Romans had early communicated with the Apollo of Delphi. It was not until the time of Augustus, however, that Apollo had a commanding place in Roman religious life. The games of Apollo, the Ludi Apollinares, held from July 16 to 30, were instituted in 212 B. C., at a critical period in the Hannibalic War, when Hannibal had invaded Campania. At the prompting of the Italian oracles of Marcius, the games were established, but for the occasion only. They were entirely Greek, and were under the management of the priests who had charge of the Sibylline Books. Stage plays and chariot races were given. In 208 B. C., the games were renewed in consequence of a pestilence; they were then made permanent.

Priapus, an ancient Lampsacan deity, became to the Romans little more than a scarecrow to frighten away birds in gardens and on farms. Tibullus so considers him in 1.1.17-18, where he writes, 'In the fruit orchards, let Priapus, the red guardian, be placed, to frighten away the birds with his savage scythe'. The association of poetry with Priapus began in the Alexandrian Age. In Rome the tradition persisted, as is attested by Horace, Sermones 1.8, by Tibullus 1.4, and by the collection of poems which passes under the name Priapea.

Isis is the favorite goddess of Tibullus's sweetheart Delia. While the poet is ill on the island of Phaeacia (1.3), the performance of sacred rites to this goddess by Delia for his welfare has gone for naught, and Tibullus complains (23): 'What good now is your Isis to me, Delia?' Details of the rites are given, the clashing of the bronze sistra by the devotees of the goddess, the ceremonial cleansing in pure water, and the sleeping apart in a clean bed. The goddess is a healer of diseases, as the painted tablets dedicated in her temple prove. Delia, marked by her beauty, clad in white linen, will sit before the doors of the temple at sunrise and at sunset, fulfilling the vows which she made on the departure of her lover for the East, and which she is bound to fulfill, in consideration of the compact with the goddess, in case Tibullus shall return safe and sound.

Osiris, whose inventio was the most important celebration in connection with the worship of Isis, is represented by Tibullus (1.7.29-38) as having been the first to make use of the plough, the first to sow seed and gather fruits, train the vine, and make wine. He delights in song, and dance, and bright flowers; his brows are encircled with ivy berries and his robes are saffron and Tyrian scarlet; with his worship is associated the 'light casket that is privy to the sacred things hidden within it' (43-48).

The Egyptian Isis was a divinity of multiple personality. In Greece, she was identified with Aphrodite, Demeter, Hera, and others, 'a pantheistic power that was everything in one'⁵. Similarly, her consort, Serapis, was Zeus, Pluto, and Helios.

In Rome, Isis was identified with Venus, and became the patron goddess of women who traded on their beauty. The great appeal of the worship lay in its rich exotic ritual, and in the hope it offered of immortality, in its great flexibility in assimilating other gods, and in the lack of dogmatism in its creed. The ritual laid stress on personal cleanliness, at first merely ceremonial; but soon the idea grew that the ablutions and abstinence brought about an actual cleansing from sin and a rebirth. The prayers were really incantations, calculated to force obedience on the part of the divinity. The ceremonies of Isis took place, as we have seen, at sunrise and at sunset. The apertio in the morning as the sun rose consisted in unveiling the goddess, gorgeously dressed and loaded with jewels, to the kneeling worshippers, who were dressed in spotless linen. The sacred fire was kindled by the priests, who offered water of the Nile to the divinity, chanted hymns to the accompaniment of the flute, and called upon the divinity in the Egyptian language. The most important part of the ceremony, as we have said, was the inventio or finding of Osiris. Isis and her worshippers bewail the loss of Osiris, whose limbs had been scattered by Typhon. On the discovery of the body the cries of the rejoicing devotees spread through street and temple.

The worship of the Egyptian divinities Isis and Serapis (Osiris)⁶ was known in Sicily as early as the third century B. C., and at Rome as early as the time of Sulla. A Temple of Isis was decreed by the Triumvirs in 43 B. c., but the relations of Antony and Cleopatra brought odium upon the Egyptian cults, and the temple seems never to have been constructed. However, the cult became very popular again in the first century A. D. Caligula first officially recognized the cult; he, probably, built the first Serapeum in Rome. The worship reached its apoge in the second century. Its growth was helped by persecution which was visited upon it partly because of its rumored looseness of morals and the secrecy of its rites, partly because the Romans were jealous of Alexandria and feared her power.

The thought of death haunts the lines of Tibullus, as it does those of many other Roman poets. Some of his finest passages are in this strain. In 1.1.59-72 he expresses the hope that he may behold Delia, when his last hour shall come (69-72): 'Meanwhile, while the fates allow, let us love one another. Presently will come Death, his head shrouded in darkness; presently sluggish old age will creep up, and it will be unseemly to play the lover's part and utter blandishing words when the head is white'. While he is sick in Phaeacia, the thought of death is ever before him (1.3.3-9): 'Phaeacia holds me ill in strange lands. Keep off your greedy hands, black Death, keep off your greedy hands, I pray. Here I have no mother to gather my burned bones to her sorrowing bosom, no sister to offer Assyrian perfumes to my ashes and to weep before my tomb with flowing hair, no Delia anywhere …'Not only the thought of death haunts these lines, but the dread of dying in a foreign land without relatives and friends and without funeral rites. In 1.10.33, in a poem against war, Tibullus queries, 'What madness is it to summon black death by wars?' The reverence of the Romans for the dead is shown in 2.4.47-50, in a passage in which Tibullus, with great delicacy, pictures the old man who, every year, might place a garland on the tomb of his sweetheart of days gone by, who had been kind to him and had been free from greed: ' … may you have a good and tranquil rest and may you be care-free, as the light earth rests above your bones'.

Tibullus in all his prayers has a purely practical purpose in mind, that of constraining the divinity to yield to his wishes, in return for due sacrifice. There is no suggestion that he prays for spiritual good, or that the divinity invoked shall lead him to better action—in a word, no hint of the motives which lead a devout person of our day to pray. A lamb falls to the Lares: in return the peasants expect good crops and wine. Tibullus invokes the Lares in sacrifice: the Lares must ward off the shafts of war. Incense, sacrificial cakes, and wine are offered to the Genius of Cornutus: the Genius is compelled to grant whatever wish Comutus expresses. Millet and milk are offered to Pales: Pales must ward off evil influences from the crops and the cattle. The farmer invokes the gods of his ancestors who, in return for sacrifice of the suovetaurilia, will ward off evil and induce good.

Notes

¹ In this study I have made constant use of the following secondary sources in completing the picture of Roman religious life as depicted by Tibullus: Kirby Flower Smith, The Elegies of Tibullus (New York, American Book Company, 1913); W. Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London, Macmillan, 1911); W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (London, Macmillan, 1908); Franz Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, English Translation (Chicago, The Open Court Publishing Company, 1911).

² The prayer as given by Cato runs thus: 'Father Mars, I pray and entreat thee to be favorable and propitious to me, my home, and my slaves <familia >; with this aim, I have ordered the suovetaurilia to be driven around my arable field, land, and farm, that thou mayest ward off, debar, and keep away from us diseases, seen and unseen, dearth, devastation, disasters, inclement weather, and that thou mayest permit the products, grain, vineyards, shrubbery to come to full growth and prove a success, and that thou mayest keep the shepherds and their flocks safe, and grant good health and strength to me, my home, and my slaves; and to this end, as I have stated it—the purification and lustration of my farm, land, and cultivated field—, be strengthened by this sacrifice of the suckling suovetaurilia. Father Mars, with this same object, receive strength from the sacrifice of the suckling suovetaurilia'. See E. E. Burriss, The Religious Life on a Roman Farm as Reflected in the De Agricultura of Marcus Porcius Cato, THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 21.28.

³ See Professor Smith on Tibullus 1.3.15.

⁴ See Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People, 50, 52, and The Classical Weekly 22. 86, note II. In the latter place reference is made to a discussion of the Petronius passage, by M. H. Morgan, in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 32 (1901), 100-103.

⁵ Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, 89.

⁶ See Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, 74.