f the _pater
patratus_ of the Fetiales,[321] of the Fratres Arvales, or the Fratres
Attiedii of Iguvium. What exactly they understood by Pater and Mater
when applied to deities is not so easy to determine: we have not the
necessary data. They were never applied, I believe, to imported deities,
_di novensiles_; always to _di indigetes_, those on whom the original
Roman stock looked as their fellow-citizens and guardians. And we shall
not be far wrong if we conclude that in general they imply the
dependence of the human citizen upon his divine protector, and thus
bring the usage into line with that of other Aryan peoples. Behind this
feeling of dependence there may have been the idea, handed down from
remote ages, that Father Sky and Mother Earth were in a sense the
parents of all living things; but there is nothing in the Roman religion
to suggest that the two were thought of as personally uniting in
marriage or a sexual act.

I will sum up this part of the discussion by translating an admirable
passage in Aust's book on the Roman religion, with which I am in cordial
agreement[322]:--

"The deities of Rome were deities of the cult only. They had no human
form; they had not the human heart with its virtues and vices. They had
no intercourse with each other, and no common or permanent residence;
they enjoyed no nectar and ambrosia ... they had no children, no
parental relation. They were indeed both male and female, and a male and
female deity are often in close relations with each other; but this is
not a relation of marriage, and rests only on a similarity in the sphere
of their operations.... These deities never become independent
existences; they remain cold, colourless conceptions, _numina_ as the
Romans called them, that is, supernatural beings whose existence only
betrays itself in the exercise of certain powers."

They were, indeed, cold and colourless conceptions as compared with the
Greek gods of Olympus, whose warmth and colour is really that of human
life, of human passions; but the one remarkable and interesting thing
about these Roman and Italian numina is the life and force for good or
evil which is the very essence of their being. The puzzling combinations
we have just been studying are quite enough to illustrate this
character. Moles, Virites, Nerio, and perhaps others too, seem to mean
the strength or force inherent in the numen; Cerfius, or Cerus, as the
Latins called it, Liber, Genius, all are best i