Roman Religion 1910–1960

When, in 1911, the first volume of JRS appeared it contained among other matter an article by W. Warde Fowler on ‘The Original Meaning of the word Sacer’. This was later (1920) reprinted in Roman Essays and Interpretations , 15–24, and is characteristic of its author, not only because of its keen insight into Roman ways of thought and full acquaintance with the relevant passages in Latin authors, but in its cautious and moderate use of the Comparative Method in dealing with the history of an ancient and imperfectly known religion. A scrap of Polynesian information on the meaning of ‘tabu’ was got from R. R. Marett, whose Threshold of Religion was then a new book (1909), and whom Warde Fowler knew and appreciated. About this time, Fowler, who was meditating an elaborate edition of Plutarch, a project which his failing sight compelled him to drop, passed on to me some notes on the Roman Questions (see below, p. 163), a typical piece of readiness to help and advise a young scholar. So far as his contributions to Roman religion went, the first two decades of this century were his flowering-time. Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic had appeared in 1899; his Gifford Lectures of 1909–10 appeared in book form ( The Religious Experience of the Roman People ) just in time to have a cordial and appreciative review from E. R. Bevan in the first number of JRS

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