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OF THE ROMANS; THE BEGINNING OF THEIR EMPIRE AND THEIR RELIGION; THEIR TOLERATION

THE ROMANS cannot be reckoned amongst the primitive nations. Rome has existed only seven hundred and fifty years before our vulgar era. When they had rites and laws, they adopted them from the Tuscans and the Greeks. The Tuscans communicated to them the superstition of augurs; a superstition, nevertheless, founded upon physical observations; upon the passage of birds, from whence they foretold the change of the atmosphere. It appears that all superstition hath something natural for its principle, and that many errors are derived from truth that is abused.

The Greeks furnished the Romans with the law of the twelve tables. A people who apply to another nation for laws and gods, must be a small and barbarous people: and such were the first Romans. Their territory in the time of the kings and the first consuls were not so extensive as those of Ragusa. We must not by this title of king, understand a monarch such as Cyrus, and his successors. The chief of a little people living by rapine can never be despotic. The spoils are divided in common, and each one defends his liberty as his own property. The first kings of Rome were the captains of freebooters.

If we are to credit the Roman historians, this little people began by ravishing the girls, and seizing upon their neighbors’ goods. They should have been exterminated; but the ferocity and want which led them on to rapine, crowned their unjust enterprises with success; they maintained themselves, by being always at war; and at length, after about four centuries had elapsed, being more warlike than any other people, they made them all submit one after the other, from the extremity of the Adriatic gulf to the Euphrates.

In the midst of rapine, the love of their country always predominated, till the time of Sylla. This love of their country consisted for upwards of four hundred years in bringing something to the common stock of what had been pillaged from other nations. This is the virtue of robbers. Patriotism is murdering and fleecing other men. But great virtues existed in the heart of the republic. The Romans polished by time, polished all the barbarians they conquered, and became at length the legislators of the West.

The Greeks appeared in the early times of their republic, as a nation superior to the Romans. These do not issue from the haunts of their seven mountains with a handful of hay (manipli) which serve them for standards, only to sack the neighboring villages. They, on the contrary, are employed only in defense of their liberty. The Romans rob four or five hundred miles in circumference, the Equi, the Volsci, and the Antiates. The Greeks repulse the innumerable armies of the great king of Persia, and triumph over him by land and sea. The victorious Greeks cultivate and improve all the fine arts; and the Romans are entirely ignorant of them, till about the time of Scipio Africanus.

I shall make two important observations here with respect to their religion; the first is they adopted or allowed the doctrine of every other people, after the example of the Greeks; and that in reality the senate and the emperors always acknowledged one supreme God, as well as the greatest part of the philosophers and poets of Greece.

The toleration of all religions was a natural law, engraven in the hearts of all men. For what right can one created being have to compel another to think as he does? but when a people are united, when religion is become a law of the state, we should submit to that law. Now, the Romans by their law adopted all the Gods of the Greeks, who themselves had altars for the gods unknown, as we have already observed.

The twelve tables ordained, separatim nemo habessit deos neve advenas nisi publice adscitos, “That no one should have foreign or new gods without the public sanction.” This sanction was given to many doctrines; and all the others were tolerated. This association of all the divinities of the world, this kind of divine hospitality, was the law of nations from all antiquity, except one or two little nations.

As there were no dogmas, there was no religious war. It was enough that ambition and rapine should shed human blood, without religion accomplishing the extermination of the world.

It is also very remarkable that amongst the Romans no one was ever persecuted for his way of thinking. There is not a single example from the time of Romulus down to Domitian; and amongst the Greeks, Socrates is the only exception.

It is again incontestable that the Romans, as well as the Greeks, adored one supreme God. Their Jupiter was the only god who was looked upon as the master of thunder, the only one that was styled the most great and the most good God, Deus optimus maximus. Thus from Italy to India and China, you find the doctrine of one supreme God, and the toleration in all nations that were known.

With this knowledge of one God, with this universal indulgence, which are everywhere the fruit of cultivated reason, were blended innumerable superstitions, which were the ancient fruits of reason erroneous and in its dawn. We know that the sacred fowls, the goddess Pertunda, and the goddess Cloacina, are ridiculous.

Why did not the conquerors and legislators of so many nations abolish such nonsense? Because being ancient, it was dear to the people, and was no way prejudicial to the government. The Scipios, the Paulus Emiliuses, the Ciceros, the Catos, the Caesars, had other employment than that of corn-bating popular superstition. When an ancient error is established, policy avails itself of it, as a bit which the vulgar have put into their own mouth, till such time as another superstition arises to destroy it, and policy profits of this second error as it did of the first.