ose who drew up the
calendar had the deliberate intention of excluding from the State
ritual, as far as was possible, everything in the nature of barbarism
and magic. For the religious purposes of a people occupied in
agriculture and war, and already beginning to develop some idea of law
and order, there was no need of any religious rites except such as would
serve, in decency and order, to propitiate the deities concerned with
the fertilisation of man, beast, and crop, and with the safety and
efficacy of the host in its struggle with the enemies of the city. The
Roman people grew up, in their city life as in the life of the family,
in self-restraint, dignity, and good order, confident in the course of
_cura_ and _caerimonia_, itself decent and stately, if soulless, which
the religious authorities had drawn up for them.

We should naturally like to know something about those authorities, who
thus placed the religion of the State on a comparatively high level of
ritualistic decency, if not of theological subtlety. The Romans
themselves attributed the work to a priest-king, Numa Pompilius, and
probably their instinct was a right one. Names matter little in such
matters; but there is surely something in the universal Roman tradition
of a great religious legislator, something too, it may be, in the
tradition that he was a Sabine, a representative of the community on the
Quirinal which had been embodied in the Roman city before the calendar
was drawn up, and of the sturdy, serious stock of central Italy, which
retained its _virtus_ longer than any other Italian people.[216] We are
quite in the dark as to all this, unless we can put any kind of
confidence in the traditional belief of the Romans themselves. But there
is one point on which I should like to make a suggestion--a new one so
far as I know. Numa was said to have been the first Flamen Dialis; but
that is absolutely impossible, for the ancient taboos on that priesthood
would have made it impossible for him to become supreme legislator.
Evidently this Flamen, who could hardly leave his own house, might never
leave the city, and was at every turn hedged in by restrictions on his
activity, was a survival of those magician-kings who make rain and do
other useful things, but would lose their power if they were exposed to
certain contingencies; the number of possible contingencies increases
till the unfortunate owner of the powers becomes powerless by virtue of
the care so