For the Roman nation was derived from at least three secondary sources,—­the Latins, Sabines, and Etruscans.  To these may be added the Pelasgian settlers on the western coast (unless these are included in the Etruscan element), and the very ancient race of Siculi or Sikels, whose name suggests, by its phonetic analogy, a branch of that widely wandering race, the Kelts[272].  But the obscure and confused traditions of these Italian races help us very little in our present inquiry.  That some of the oldest Roman deities were Latin, others Sabine, and others Etruscan, is, however, well ascertained.  From the Latin towns Alba and Lavinium came the worship of Vesta, Jupiter, Juno, Saturn and Tellus, Diana and Mars.  Niebuhr thinks that the Sabine ritual was adopted by the Romans, and that Varro found the real remains of Sabine chapels on the Quirinal.  From Etruria came the system of divination.  Some of the oldest portions of the Roman religion were derived from agriculture.  The god Saturn took his name from sowing.  Picus and Faunus were agricultural gods.  Pales, the goddess of herbage, had offerings of milk on her festivals.  The Romans, says Doellinger, had no cosmogony of their own; a practical people, they took the world as they found it, and did not trouble themselves about its origin.  Nor had they any favorite deities; they worshipped according to what was proper, every one in turn at the right time.  Though the most polytheistic of religions, there ran through their system an obscure conception of one supreme being, Jupiter Optimus-Maximus, of whom all the other deities were but qualities and attributes.  But they carried furthest of all nations this personifying and deifying of every separate power, this minute subdivision of the deity.  Heffter[273] says this was carried to an extent which was almost comic.  They had divinities who presided over talkativeness and silence, over beginnings and endings, over the manuring of the fields, and over all household transactions.  And as the number increased, it became always more difficult to recollect which was the right god to appeal to under any special circumstances.  So that often they were obliged to call on the gods in general, and, dismissing the whole polytheistic pantheon, to invoke some unknown god, or the supreme being.  Sometimes, however, in these emergencies, new deities were created for the occasion.  Thus they came to invoke the pestilence, defeat in battle, blight, etc., as dangerous beings whose hostility must be placated by sacrifices.  A better part of their mythology was the worship of Modesty (Pudicitia), Faith or Fidelity (Fides), Concord (Concordia), and the gods of home.  It was the business of the pontiffs to see to the creation of new divinities.  So the Romans had a goddess Pecunia, money (from Pecus, cattle), dating from the time when the circulating medium consisted in cows and sheep.  But when copper money came, a god of copper was added, AEsculanus; and when silver money was invented, a god Argentarius arrived.