“I suppose one question is whether there is more than one true religion,” Gaius said when his turn to speak arrived. “Of course each people has its faith and should be allowed to keep it, but here in Rome you seem to worship more gods than I ever knew existed. Just tonight, for instance, I saw some kind of procession that sounded oriental, but most of those following it looked Roman.”
“That must have been the Isia,” observed Herennius Senecio, one of the more important of the guests. “The followers of Isis celebrate her search for the dismembered body of Osiris at this time of year. When she has gathered the pieces she reanimates his body and conceives the sun-child Horus anew.”
“Do not the British tribes have a festival at this time also?” asked Tacitus. “I seem to remember processions around the countryside with masks and bones.”
“True,” replied Gaius. “At Samaine the white mare goes around with her followers and the people invite the souls of their ancestors to reincarnate in the wombs of the women of the tribe.”
“Perhaps that is the answer then,” said Malleus. “Though we all have different names for the gods, they are all in essence the same, and therefore to worship any of them is piety.”
“For instance, the god whom we call Jupiter is known by his oak tree and his thunderbolt,” said Tacitus. “The Germans worship him as Donar, and the British as Tanarus or Taranis.”
Gaius was not so sure. It was hard to imagine any Celtic deity being worshipped in a great temple like the one dedicated to Jupiter in the Forum. At one party he had met a woman they said was a Vestal and he had observed her with curiosity, but although the woman was marked by a certain dignity and certainly more decorum than most of the Roman women he had seen, there was none of the nobility he associated with the women of the Forest House. Curiously, it was easier to identify the Egyptian Isis, whose procession he had just seen, with the Great Goddess Eilan served.
“I think, that our British friend has put his ringer on a real problem,” said Malleus. “Surely that is why our fathers fought so hard to keep foreign cults like that of Cybele and Dionysos from taking root in Rome. Even the temple of Isis was burned.”
“If we include all the peoples of the world in our Empire,” Tacitus countered, “then we must also include their gods. I would never deny that, for I think that there is more honor, more purity of morals, and more of what we would call piety in the hall of any German chieftain than in most of the mansions of Rome. There is no harm in that, so long as the rituals that preserve the State are given first priority.”
“That seems to be what the deified Augustus had in mind when he allowed his cult to spread through the Empire,” Malleus replied. There was a short silence.
“Dominus et Deus . . .” someone said softly, and Gaius remembered hearing that was how the Emperor liked to be addressed these days. “He goes too far! Will we return to the days when Caligula trotted out his favorite horse for everyone to worship?”
Gaius looked around and realized in some surprise that the man who had spoken was Flavius Clemens, some kind of cousin of the Emperor.
“Pietas is the essence of reverence and obligation between men and the gods, not adulation for a mortal!” Senecio exclaimed. “Even Augustus insisted that “Roma” be coupled with his name. We do not worship the man, but his genius, the god within him. To believe that a mere human has the wisdom and power to govern an Empire like this one would be impiety indeed.”
“Well, in the Provinces the cult works as a force for unity,” Gaius observed brightly in the even more uncomfortable silence that followed. “When nobody knows what the Emperor is like personally, all they can do is to worship the idea of a Divine Ruler. Whatever their personal religion, everyone can come together to burn incense to the Emperor.”