The Life of Cicero Volume II Chapter 14 - Cicero’s Religion

CHAPTER XIV.

Cicero's Religion i should have hardly thought it necessary to devote a chapter of my book to the religion of a pagan had i not while studying cicero's life found that i was not dealing with a pagan's mind the mind of the roman who so lived as to cause his life to be written in after times was at this period in most instances nearly a blank as to any ideas of a god horace is one who in his writings speaks much of himself ovid does so still more constantly they are both full of allusions to the gods they are both aware that it is a good thing to speak with respect of the national worship and that the orders of the emperor will be best obeyed by believers te minorem quod geris imperas says horace when in obedience probably to augustus he tells his fellow-citizens that they are forgetting their duties in their unwillingness to pay for the repairs of the temples superi quorum sumus omnia says ovid thinking it well to show in one of his writings which he sent home from his banishment that he still entertained the fashionable creed but they did not believe it was at that time the fashion to pretend a light belief in order that those below might live as though they believed and might induce an absolute belief in the women and the children it was not well that the temple of the gods should fall into ruins it was not well that the augurs who were gentlemen of high family should go for nothing caesar himself was the high priest and thought much of the position but he certainly was bound by no priestcraft a religious belief was not expected from a gentleman religious ceremonies had gradually sunk so low in the world's esteem that the roman nobility had come to think of their gods as things to swear by or things to amuse them or things from which if times were bad with them some doubtful assistance might perchance come in dealing with ordinary pagans of those days religion may be laid altogether on one side i remember no passage in livy or tacitus indicating a religious belief but with cicero my mind is full of such and they are of a nature to make me feel that had he lived a hundred years later i should have suspected him of some hidden knowledge of christ's teachings m renan has reminded us of cicero's dislike to the jews he could not learn from the jews though the jew indeed had much that he could teach him the religion which he acquired was far from the selfishness of either jew or roman He believed in eternity, in the immortality of the soul, in virtue for the sake of its reward hereafter, in the omnipotence of God, the performance of his duty to his neighbours, in conscience and in honesty.