nus, and so on; others with
substantival names, Tellus, Robigus, Terminus; the former apparently
functional deities, concerned in the operations of nature or man, and
the latter spirits immanent in objects--Mother Earth herself, a stone,
the mildew, or (like Janus and Vesta) the entrance and the hearth-fire
of human dwellings or cities. Lastly, we found from the evidence,
chiefly of the priesthoods, that certain more important divinities stand
out from the crowd of spirits, Janus, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, and
Vesta; and we found some reason to think that these, and possibly a few
of the others, by becoming the objects of priestly _cura_ and
_caerimonia_ at particular spots in the city, were not unlikely to
become also in some sense personal deities, to acquire a quasi-human
personality, if they came by the chance. In the present lecture I must
go rather more closely into such evidence as we possess bearing on the
mental conception which these early Romans had formed of the divine
beings whom they had admitted within their city.

And, first, we must be quite clear that in those early ages there was
nothing in Rome which we can call a temple, as we understand the word;
nor was there any such representation of a deity as we can call an image
or _eidolon_. The deities were settled in particular spots of ground,
which were made _loca sacra_, _i.e._ handed over to the deity by the
process of _consecratio_ authorised by the _ius divinum_.[291] It was
matter of no moment what might be erected on this bit of ground; there
might be a rude house like that of Vesta, round in shape like the oldest
Italian huts; there might be a gateway like that of Janus; or the spot
might be a grove, or a clearing within it (_lucus_), as in the case of
Robigus or the Dea Dia of the Arval Brethren. All such places might be
called by the general name _fanum_; and as a rule no doubt each _fanum_
contained a _sacellum_, _i.e._ a small enclosure without a roof,
containing a little altar (_ara_). These "altars" may at first have been
nothing more than temporary erections of turf and sods; permanent stone
altars were probably a later development. Servius tells us that in later
times it was the custom to place a sod (_caespes_) on the top of such a
stone altar, which must be one of the many survivals in cult of the
usages of a simpler age.[292]

With such spots as these we cannot associate anything in the nature of
an image of the deity established there;