Salve Celetre
Ambrosius Celetrus wrote:But what do you think of Orcus' statement "the Gods don't need anything from us?" This seems Hellenic to me. I always thought the Religio was a reciprocal affair.
If you looked through Roman literature you would not find any one view on that matter. Not even with one individual. We get it only second hand, through Augustinus of Hippo, but supposedly Varro had said, "The Gods do not want sacrifices, their statues even less." Then Augustinus also wrote, "Varro feared that many gods would perish, not by hostile action, but by neglect." I think Augustinus misrepresented Varro's views, but still it would come across that Varro would not think the Gods "needed" anything in particular from us so much on the level to which Orcus referred. No God is about to die of thirst because I neglected to offer a libation. The reciprocal relationships we build with the Gods would no more imply a "need" existed with the Gods, only that both parties to a contract were obligated to fulfill their portions. The pimp in one of Plautus' plays implies that the Gods would be harmed in some way, or maybe better to say They would be chastised, if everyone boycotted offering Them sacrifices. Even in that he was saying that humans could serve notice to the Gods that they were obligated to fulfill Their part of a bargain, and not that we could threaten Their existence.
I believe that we, - Gods, humans and all life, are all part of the divinity that permeates the Universe. An individual human is not as powerful as a God but no less has an impact on the whole. We are joined together, all existing in a symbiotic relationship to the Whole. Since the Gods draw on the Whole for Their existence, it would be in Their interest that the Whole remain healthy. In that sense then the Gods do have need of us. You will find in Roman literature a concept of a hierarchy of being in which humans are assigned a stewardship of their own part of the universe. For example I recall, I think in Cicero's
De Natura Deorum, some idea that humans have an obligation to care for and preserve animal life just as the Gods tend to us. And since there is this idea that each level in the hierarchy of being has its own roles to fulfill in preserving the Universe, the Gods have need for us to do our own part. The relationship we build with the Gods through rituals and other forms of communication assist in forming a unified effort of preserving and improving the Universe in which we all live, and therefore it is beneficial to both Gods and humankind to maintian our interrelationship. We both "need" it in order to preserve our existence.
Dique Deaeque te bene ament