avourite theory of the making of a god
from the time of Euhemerus down to Herbert Spencer. There are religions
in which it is true for certain of the major gods, but there are no
traces of the process in Roman religion, and the reason is obvious in
view of the peculiar character of ancestor worship in Rome.

We have now seen the principal elements which went to make up the family
religion and that part of the state religion which was an enlargement
and an imitation of the family religion. But even in the most primitive
times a Roman's life was not bounded by his own hut and the phenomenon
of death. There was work to be done in life, a living to be gained, and
here, as everywhere, there were hosts of unseen powers who must be
propitiated. His religion was not only coincident with every phase of
private life, it was also closely related to the specific occupations
and interests of the people, and just as the interests of the community,
its means of livelihood, were agriculture and stock-raising, so the gods
were those of the crops and the herds. Some years ago the late Professor
Mommsen succeeded in extracting from the existing stone calendars a list
of the religious festivals of the old Roman year, and also in proving
that this list of festivals was complete in its present condition at a
time before the city of Rome was surrounded by the wall which Servius
Tullius built, and that it therefore goes back to the old kingdom, the
time of what has been called the "Religion of Numa." We cannot go
through all the festivals in detail, but it is extremely interesting to
notice that almost every one of them is connected with the life of the
farmer and represents the action of propitiation towards some god or
group of gods at every time in the Roman year which was at all critical
for agricultural interests.

It must not be forgotten also that this list is not absolutely complete,
because it represents merely the official state festivals, and not even
all of them but only those which fell upon the same day or days every
year, so that they could be engraved in the stone to form a perpetual
calendar. All state festivals, of which there were several, which were
appointed in each particular year according to the backward or forward
estate of the harvest, were omitted from the list, though they were
celebrated at some time in every year; and naturally the public
calendars contained no reference to the many private and semi-private
cerem