Roman Prayer and Its Relation to Ethics
| Autor: | Gordon J. Laing |
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| Rok vydání: | 1911 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Classical Philology. 6:180-196 |
| ISSN: | 1546-072X 0009-837X |
| DOI: | 10.1086/359518 |
| Popis: | It is a commonplace of writers on comparative religion that primitive prayers contain no ethical element.' It is said that in the early days of religion men importuned their gods for increase of blessings or decrease of sufferings. They prayed for victory over their enemies, for the rich booty of successful warfare, for fruitfulness in their flocks, herds, and fields, and, at a later stage of their development, for success in ventures of trade. They prayed also for relief in time of pestilence, famine, or other calamity. Furthermore, far from confining their petitions to their own prosperity, they frankly and openly prayed that disaster and death might be the portion of their enemies. But they did not pray to the gods to make them better men, to give them clean hearts, to guide them in the straight and narrow way of purity and rectitude, to strengthen them so that they could resist temptation. In a word, for many primitive cultures a complete divorce of religion and morality is assumed. Morality of a kind these cultures had, but it was independent of their religion. With them religion was the means of getting in touch with the powers of the unseen world, whose assistanice could be secured by due forms of ritual; while the morality they knew was founded on social conditions. Offense against the moral code made one liable to punishment by such forms of reprisal as the community recognized but did not necessarily imply any offense against a god. The union of morality and religion came comparatively late. Such is the description frequently given of the relation of religion and morality among primitive peoples, and the lack of the ethical element in their prayers is continually emphasized. In this paper it is my purpose to examine Roman prayers with a view to determining to what extent they conform to or diverge from the type described above; and where they diverge, to ascertain the sources of the new elements contained in them. I will begin with some of the prayers given by Appel in his Romanarum precationum |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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