they were somewhat advanced in their career as
spirits, and might possibly develop into powers of a more definite kind,
if not into gods, real _dei_ conceived as persons.[221] In other
words--for it is better to keep as far as we can to the subjective or
psychological aspect of them--the Roman might realise the Power better
by getting to think of his nameless spirits as _dei_ at work for his
benefit if rightly propitiated. There are some signs in the calendar and
the other sources I mentioned just now that such a process had been
going on before the State arose; and it is certain that the whole field
of divine operation had been greatly widened by that time, as we might
expect from the enlarged sphere of man's experience and activity.

The deities originally belonging to the city of the four regions, _i.e._
to the city of the calendar of Numa, were known to Roman antiquarians as
_di indigetes_, in contra-distinction from the _di novensiles_ or
imported deities, with which at present we have nothing to do. On the
basis of the calendar, and of the names of the most ancient priesthoods
attached to particular cults, the Rex and the Flamines, Wissowa (_R.K._
p. 16) has constructed a list of these _di indigetes_ which may be
accepted without any further reservation than he himself applies to it.
They are thirty-three in number, but in two cases we have groups instead
of individuals, viz. the Lares and the Lemures: the plurality of the
Lares (_compitales_) we have already explained, and the Lemures, the
ghosts of departed ancestors, we may also for the present leave out of
account. Others are too obscure to help us, _e.g._ Carna, Angerona,
Furrina, Neptunus, Volturnus,[222] except in so far as their very
obscurity, and the neglect into which they and their cults fell in later
times, is proof that they were not thought of as lively personal
deities. Then, again, there are others whose names are suggested by
certain festivals, Terminus, Fons, Robigus, who seem to be simply
survivals from the animistic period--spirits inherent in the
boundary-stone, the spring, or the mildew, and incapable of further
development in the new conditions of city life. Faunus, the rural
semi-deity, perhaps representing a group of such beings, appears in the
list as the deity of the Lupercalia; but this is a point in which I
cannot agree with Wissowa and the majority of modern authorities.[223]

We are struck, as we examine the list further, by the ad