[109] There were three tribes in old Rome, the Ramnes on the Palatine, the Tities or Sabines on the Capitoline, and the Luceres; but whether the last were Etruscans or Ramnians or neither is uncertain.—­ED.

CHAPTER XVIII

ROMAN RELIGION

=The Roman Gods.=—­The Romans, like the Greeks, believed that everything that occurs in the world was the work of a deity.  But in place of a God who directs the whole universe, they had a deity for every phenomenon which they saw.  There was a divinity to make the seed sprout, another to protect the bounds of the fields, another to guard the fruits.  Each had its name, its sex, and its functions.

The principal gods were Jupiter, god of the heaven; Janus, the two-faced god (the deity who opens); Mars, god of war; Mercury, god of trade; Vulcan, god of fire; Neptune, god of the sea; Ceres, goddess of grains, the Earth, the Moon, Juno, and Minerva.

Below these were secondary deities.  Some personified a quality—­for example, Youth, Concord, Health, Peace.  Others presided over a certain act in life:  when the infant came into the world there were a god to teach him to speak, a goddess to teach him to drink, another charged with knitting his bones, two to accompany him to school, two to take him home again.  In short, there was a veritable legion of minor special deities.

Other gods protected a city, a certain section of a mountain, a forest; every river, every fountain, every tree had its little local divinity.  It is this that makes an old woman in a Latin romance exclaim, “Our country is so full of gods that it is much easier to find a god than a man.”

=Form of the Gods.=—­The Romans, unlike the Greeks, did not give their gods a precise form.  For a long time there was no idol in Rome; they worshipped Jupiter under the form of a rock, Mars under that of a sword.  It was later that they imitated the wooden statues of the Etruscans and the marbles of the Greeks.  Perhaps they did not at first conceive of the gods as having human forms.

Unlike the Greeks they did not imagine marriage and kinship among their gods; they had no legends to tell of these relationships; they knew of no Olympus where the gods met together.  The Latin language had a very significant word for designating the gods:  they were called Manifestations.  They were the manifestations of a mysterious divine power.  This is why they were formless, without family relationship, without legends.  Everything that was known of the gods was that each controlled a natural force and could benefit or injure men.

=Principles of the Roman Religion.=—­The Roman was no lover of these pale and frigid abstractions; he even seemed to fear them.  When he invoked them, he covered his face, perhaps that he might not see them.  But he thought that they were potent and that they would render him service, if he knew how to please them.  “The man whom the gods favor,” says Plautus, “they cause to gain wealth.”