liarly
and distinctively Italian, and, as we know it, Roman.

CHAPTER IX

RELIGION AND MORALITY--CONCLUSION

It might be said that a religion--the expression of man's relation to
the unseen--has not necessarily any connection with morality--man's
action in himself and towards his neighbours: that an individual--or
even a nation--might perfectly fulfil the duties imposed by the 'powers
above,' without being influenced in conduct and character. Such a view
might seem to find an apt illustration in the religion of Rome: the
ceremonial _pietas_ towards the gods appears to have little to do with
the making of man or nation. But in the history of the world the test
of religions must be their effect on the character of those who
believed in them: religion is no doubt itself an outcome of character,
but it reacts upon it, and must either strengthen or weaken. We are not
therefore justified in dismissing the 'Religion of Numa' without
inquiry as to its relation to morality, for on our answer to that
question must largely depend our judgment as to its value.

We are of course in a peculiarly difficult position to grapple with
this problem through lack of contemporary evidence. The Rome we know,
in the epochs when we can fairly judge of character and morality, was
not the Rome in which the 'Religion of Numa' had grown up and remained
unquestioned: it had been overlaid with foreign cults and foreign
ideas, had been used by priests and magistrates as a political
instrument, and discounted among the educated through the influence of
philosophy. But we may remember in the first place that even then,
especially in the household and in the country, the old religion had
probably a much firmer hold than one might imagine from literary
evidence, in the second that national character is not the growth of a
day, so that we may safely refer permanent characteristics to the
period when the old religion held its own.

It may be admitted at once that the direct influence on morality was
very small indeed. There was no table of commandments backed by the
religious sanction: the sense of 'sin,' except through breach of
ritual, was practically unknown. It is true that in the very early
_leges regiae_ some notion of this kind is seen--a significant glimpse
of what the original relation may have been: it is there ordained that
the patron who betrayed his client, or the client who deceived his
patron, shall be condemned to Iuppiter; the