een household and state. In the primitive
community the king's hearth is not merely of symbolical importance, but
of great practical utility, in that it is kept continually burning as
the source of fire on which the individual householder may draw: hence
it is the duty of the king's daughters to care for it and keep the
flame perpetually alight. In Rome the temple of Vesta is the king's
hearth, situated, as one would expect, in close proximity to the
_regia_. The fire is kept continually blazing except on the 1st of
March of every year, when it is allowed to go out and is ceremonially
renewed. The Vestal virgins, sworn to perpetual virginity and charged
with the preservation of the sacred flame, are 'the king's daughters,'
living in a kind of convent (_atrium Vestae_) and under the charge of
the king's representative, the _pontifex maximus_. It is their duty
too, as the natural cooks of the sacred royal household, to make the
salt cake (_mola salsa_) to be used at the year's festivals and to
preserve it and other sacred objects, such as the ashes of the
Fordicidia, in the storehouse of Vesta (_penus Vestae_). In the month of
June from the 7th to the 15th, with a climax on the 9th, the day of
the Vestalia, the matrons who all the year round have tended their own
hearths, come in solemn procession bare-footed to make their homely
offerings at the state-hearth, and the virgins meanwhile offer the
cakes that they have made. For eight days the ceremony continues,
during which time the bakers and millers keep holiday; the days are
_religiosi_ (marriages are unlucky and other taboos are observed) and
also _nefasti_ (no public business may be performed); until the
ceremony closes on the 15th, with the solemn cleansing of the temple
and the casting of the refuse into the Tiber, and then the normal life
of the state may be renewed--Q. St. D. F. (_Quando Stercus Delatum Fas_)
is the unique entry in the Calendars. This is all less imaginative than
the development of Ianus, but the underlying feeling is intensely Roman
and there could be no clearer idea of the natural adaptation of the
household-cult to the religion of the state.

=Penates, Lares, and Genius.=--The other household deities too have
their counterpart, though not so prominently marked, in the worship of
the state. The magistrates, on entering office, took oath by Iuppiter
and the _Di Penates populi Romani Quiritium_, and that the conception
was as wide in the state as