Roman Concept of Sin

[DecimusCaesar]

I have always thought that 'Sin' is a Christian concept derived from the story of Genesis, and that such a concept would not have been in existance in Pagan Rome.

 

Recently I began reading a book about Ancient Egypt. There was a chapter that discussed Egyptian Science and how it differed to that of their neighbours in Mesoptamia - The Babylonians. Interestingly, it said that the Babylonians believed that illness was caused by sin, a concept that was rejected by the Egyptians.

 

If the Babylonians had a concept of Sin, would the pagan Romans have held one too? Or did it only come into existance with Christianity. If the pagans had a concept of sin, then how would it have differed from the Christian one? Was there even a concept of sin in Christian Rome, or was it a construct of the Middle Ages?

[Nephele]

Since the definition of "sin" is "transgression of divine law", I would say that the Romans definitely had a concept of sin.

 

Perhaps you're thinking of the Christian concept of "Original Sin" -- relating to Adam and Eve's disobedience to god, resulting in their first sin being passed on to all of humankind? (Kind of like a disease, I suppose.) I don't think the Romans might have had any belief in "Original Sin". In fact, I daresay they might even have found it amusing.

 

-- Nephele

[DecimusCaesar]

Thank you for your quick answer Nephele!

 

 

Yes I was thinking of something along the lines of Original Sin. Perhaps it would have been better if I had consulted a dictionary on the broader meaning of the word before posting!

 

Thanks again for your answer!

[Ursus]

In mainstream Greco-Roman religion, no. The idea was you keep the gods happy with offerings and sacrifices, and if you didn't, you would lose their favor. But not sin in the Judaic sense of arousing the wrath of one's chosen deity by transgressing one of his many laws...

 

There were, however, off-color mystery cults that had beliefs akin to Original Sin. The Orphics come to mind. The basic idea was that that the material world was tainted or fallen or impure, and so was everything born to the world. (This was explained by a colorful myth involving Dionysus and the Titans) . The soul had to be released from the prison of one's body by whatever means, usually a combination of faith, asceticism and magic rites. The parallels with Christianity are obvious. I daresay this particular branch of Hellenic mysticism + Judaic tribal law = Christianity.

[Lost_Warrior]

I don't think there was much in the way of a concept of Original Sin, except for in the cases of mystery cults such as Ursus mentioned.

 

I have never encountered much in the way of "sin" in writings about ancient paganism. I'm sure they did have a concept *similar* to "sin" but I'm not sure I would call it "sin". (I'm not sure what I would call it though.) They certainly had a concept of ticking the gods off and being on the receiving end of their wrath!

 

They did have a concept of reward and punishment in the afterlife, but it's rather vague. There was Elysium and Tartarus (roughly comparable to "heaven" and "hell") but if I recall correctly not everyone went to one of those two places. Only the heroes were rewarded in Elysium and only the vilest of villains (and maybe politicians! ) were punished in Tartarus.

[Nephele]

In mainstream Greco-Roman religion, no. The idea was you keep the gods happy with offerings and sacrifices, and if you didn't, you would lose their favor. But not sin in the Judaic sense of arousing the wrath of one's chosen deity by transgressing one of his many laws...

 

Now, I'd always thought that parricide was a particularly heinous crime in the eyes of the classical gods, and that they in fact had a highly specialized trio of deities known as the Furies to the Romans, and the Erinyes or (euphemistically) Eumenides to the Greeks, who dealt out due punishment for such a transgression of divine and/or natural law. In fact, the name of one of the Erinyes -- Tisiphone -- literally means "retribution for murder".

 

Stories can be found in ancient Greek literature of the Erinyes hunting down and tormenting members of the delighfully sordid and "sinful" family of Orestes -- starting with the grandfather of Orestes who murdered and served his brother's sons to him on a dinner plate, proceeding to Orestes' father's cousin who seduced the wife of King Agamemnon (Orestes' parents) and conspired along with Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra in his murder, culminating with Orestes who murdered his mother Clytemnestra.

 

Aeschylus' play Eumenides focuses on the Erinyes hunting down Orestes for the crime of killing his mother (even though Orestes had done so to avenge his father's murder):

 

APOLLO: What is this office of yours? Boast of your fine privilege!

ERINYES: We drive matricides from their homes.

APOLLO: But what about a wife who kills her husband?

ERINYES: That would not be murder of a relative by blood... [further on in the play] Aha! This is a clear sign of the man. Follow the hints of a voiceless informer. For as a hound tracks a wounded fawn, so we track him by the drops of blood. My lungs pant from many tiring struggles, for I have roamed over the whole earth, and I have come over the sea in wingless flight, pursuing him, no slower than a ship. And now he is here somewhere, cowering. The smell of human blood gives me a smiling welcome. Look! Look again! Look everywhere, so that the matricide will not escape by secret flight, with his debt unpaid!

 

Cicero, in his De Natura Deorum ("On the Nature of the Gods") wrote: "...the Furies are so, I presume as being the watchers and punishers of misdeeds and crime." (Book III, section 18). Although, admittedly, Cicero is arguing in his work that, if the gods do take notice of human affairs, they often do a poor job of distinguishing the good from the bad.

 

-- Nephele

EDIT:

Translation of Aeschylus' Eumenides by H.W. Smyth.

Translation of Cicero's De Natura Deorum by Francis Brooks.

Edited July 22, 2007 by Nephele

[Ursus]

Stories can be found in ancient Greek literature

 

 

But those are stories, and myth is not quite on the same level as cultic practices and understandings.

 

The myths do suggest indeed the gods frowned on certain things - parricide, disrespect of the dead, violating the laws of hospitality. All three of these come to play in Trojan War cycle, for instance.

 

However, mainstream Greco-Roman religion did not codify these taboos into a detailed law, such as the one Moses bequeathed to the Judaic peoples. If we talk about "sin" in the sense of transgressing a detailed law code written on stone tablets by the hand of god, it doesn't exist in normative Greco-Roman religion. Even the maxims of the god Apollo written at Delphi were not commandments.

 

I suppose it all depends on how one defines "sin." Personally I can't divorce it from its Judeo-Christian connotations.

[Gaius Paulinus Maximus]

According to the Cambridge Dictionary......

 

original sin noun

in the Christian religion, the idea that all human beings are born with a tendency to be evil

 

 

mortal sin noun [C usually singular]

in the Roman Catholic religion, an action that is so bad that you will be punished forever after your death, if you do not ask for forgiveness from God.

 

venial (sin)

adjective FORMAL

describes a wrong action that is not serious and therefore easy to forgive:

a venial sin/error

Edited July 22, 2007 by Gaius Paulinus Maximus

[Nephele]

But those are stories, and myth is not quite on the same level as cultic practices and understandings.

 

True, but beliefs may be expressed in story form. And, perhaps it does depend on definition (as you stated). It may be that the distasteful word "sin" is just, for many of us, too strongly associated with the Judeo-Christian beliefs of our modern-day Western society.

 

If the Romans did have their own concept of "sin" (being not necessarily a transgression of codified law but perhaps more a transgression of what is perceived as moral decency), I can see this "sin" differing from that of Christianity by the fact that the justice to be meted out (via the Furies) would be non-negotiable. Unlike in Christianity, where there appears to be different degrees of sin (as pointed out by GPM in this thread) and where one may easily confess and readily receive forgiveness for one's sins. I picture the ancient Romans as being more interested in justice, whereas Christianity is more interested in redemption.

 

I came across a review of a book on the subject of sin and the ancient Romans that struck me as interesting. The title of the book is Peccatum: Sin and Guilt in Ancient Rome, by Anna Elizabeth Wilhelm-Hooijbergh. While the book isn't reviewed on the Amazon site I linked here, the review I read appeared in The Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 45 (1955). The reviewer, the late Frothingham Professor of History of Religion at Harvard University, Dr. Arthur Darby Nock, wrote this in his review of the book:

 

"Roman attitudes towards what we call sin and guilt were particularly complex. There were many factors: religious tradition defining certain acts as requiring expiation and admitting of it with its patterns of approval and condemnation; law with its determination of degrees of responsibility; a persistent conviction that public misfortunes were due to transgressions -- and this is bound up with a general human tendency to suppose that the scheme of things exacts its price for each transgression; the teachings of Greek philosophy; the increased moral sensitiveness appearing in late Hellenistic times; the special demands which Near Eastern cults made upon their votaries."

 

I haven't a copy of this book, myself, but am thinking of purchasing it. If you might be inclined to read it, Ursus, I'd be especially interested in reading your review of it.

 

-- Nephele

[Julius Ceaser]

In mainstream Greco-Roman religion, no. The idea was you keep the gods happy with offerings and sacrifices, and if you didn't, you would lose their favor. But not sin in the Judaic sense of arousing the wrath of one's chosen deity by transgressing one of his many laws...

 

There were, however, off-color mystery cults that had beliefs akin to Original Sin. The Orphics come to mind. The basic idea was that that the material world was tainted or fallen or impure, and so was everything born to the world. (This was explained by a colorful myth involving Dionysus and the Titans) . The soul had to be released from the prison of one's body by whatever means, usually a combination of faith, asceticism and magic rites. The parallels with Christianity are obvious. I daresay this particular branch of Hellenic mysticism + Judaic tribal law = Christianity.

 

So not giving offerings='sin'.

[Flavia Gemina]

I was just going through my notes and came across this from Propertius*:

 

Qui videt, is peccat; qui te non viderit ergo, non cupiet: facti lumina crimen habent.

 

He who sees you sins, therefore he who doesn't see you doesn't desire you: so the eyes stand guilty.

 

Interesting because it equates 'sinning' with merely desiring, quite a 'Christian' notion, it seems to me! ('If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out...')

 

Flavia

 

* Elegies 2.32 (written around 20 BC)

Edited July 23, 2007 by Flavia Gemina

[ASCLEPIADES]

Salve, guys and Ladies!

This comes from the essay "Ancient Greek religion" by SIR HUGH LLOYD-JONES (OXFORD):

"It was wise to pay all gods some honour, and to try not to offend any god; a god might take against a mortal, often for a trivial reason. In the Odyssey, Odysseus offends Poseidon, having in order to save the lives of himself and his men blinded his son, the monstrous Cyclops. In consequence he gets home to Ithaca only after having lost all his crew, and then has to fight for his life against his wife

[Nephele]

If one bears in mind the nature of this religion, one can see why the ethics of pre-Platonic Greece lacked the concept of sin and the notions of the will, of duty, and of obligation."

 

Interesting article, Ascelpiades, which addresses the religion of 5th century B.C.E. Greece and earlier. But surely the "notions of will, of duty, and of obligation", along with philosophy, evolved over the centuries in both societal Greece and Rome? As Harvard Professor Arthur Darby Nock wrote in the excerpt I'd quoted, "an increased moral sensitiveness" appeared in late Hellenistic times.

 

Flavia, I enjoyed that quote of yours from Propertius (writing about his lover, Cynthia)! Speaking of "sinning with the eyes", that kind of reminded me of one of my favorite myths as told by Ovid (one of my favorites because there's a Nephele who appears in it): Actaeon spies upon the naked goddess Diana and, for his "sin" (or unfortunate indiscretion), she turns him into a stag and his own hounds attack and kill him. The classical gods were not at all forgiving.

 

The Nephele in that story, by the way, was totally innocent, being merely a nymph-attendant to the goddess.

 

-- Nephele

Edited July 23, 2007 by Nephele

[ASCLEPIADES]

Interesting article, Ascelpiades, which addresses the religion of 5th century B.C.E. Greece and earlier. But surely the "notions of will, of duty, and of obligation", along with philosophy, evolved over the centuries in both societal Greece and Rome? As Harvard Professor Arthur Darby Nock wrote in the excerpt I'd quoted, "an increased moral sensitiveness" appeared in late Hellenistic times.

 

-- Nephele

Salve, Lady N!

Guess what... Darby, Lloyd-Jones and you agree. A quotation:

 

"Almost ever since Plato and certainly since the beginning of the Christian era, the ethical thinking of the West has been dominated by the assumption that there is one answer to every ethical problem, that there can be no conflict between two moral considerations of equal power, that there are certain answers to the central problems of life."

 

You can find this essay by Lloyd-Jones HERE.

Cheers and good luck!

Edited July 24, 2007 by ASCLEPIADES

[Nephele]

You can find this essay by Lloyd-Jones HERE.

Cheers and good luck!

 

Thanks for that link, Asclepiades! You always manage to find such interesting stuff! I'm at work and can't read it right now, but I'll definitely read it later when I get home!

 

-- Nephele