emple was opened, and the _ollae_ thrown down the
slope in front of it. This last act seems inexplicable; but the worship
finds a singular parallel in the dairy ritual of the Todas of the
Nilghiri hills.

Dr. Rivers, in his work on the Todas (Macmillan, 1906, p. 453), in
summing up his impressions of their worship, observes that "the attitude
of worship which is undoubtedly present in the Toda mind is becoming
transferred from the gods themselves to the material objects used in the
service of the gods." "The religious attitude of worship is being
transferred from the gods themselves _to the objects round which centres
the ritual of the dairy_." These objects are mainly the bells of the
buffaloes and the dairy vessels; and an explicit account of them, the
reverence in which they are held, and the prayers in which they are
mentioned, will be found in the fifth, sixth, and eighth chapters of Dr.
Rivers' work, which, as an account of what seems to be a religion
atrophied by over-development of ritual, is in many ways of great
interest to the student of Roman religious experience. The following
sentence will appeal to the readers of these Lectures:--

"The Todas seem to show us how the over-development of the ritual aspect
of religion may lead to atrophy of those ideas and beliefs through which
the religion has been built up; and then how, in its turn, the ritual
may suffer, and acts which are performed mechanically, with no living
ideas behind them, may come to be performed carelessly and incompletely,
while religious observances which involve trouble and discomfort may be
evaded or completely neglected."

Whether the worship of the _ollae_ was a part of the original ritual of
the Brethren, or grew up after its revival by Augustus, it is impossible
to determine. But if we can allow the dairy ritual of the Todas to
help us in the matter, we may conclude that in any case it was not
really primitive, and that it was a result of that process of
over-ritualisation to which must also be ascribed the _piacula_ caused
by the growth of a fig-tree on the roof of the temple, and the three
Sondergoetter Adolenda Commolenda Deferunda. (See above p. 161 foll.,
and Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 147.)

INDEX

Acca Larentia, 67

Acolytes, 177

Adolenda, 162

Addenda Commolenda Deferunda, 162, 490

Aedes Vestae: _see_ Vesta

Aediles, plebeian, 255

Aemilius Paulus, 340, 362, 433

_Aeneid_, the, 119, 206, 230, 250, 25