re-Olympian
religious ideas of the Greeks. "The conclusion which he draws," writes
Dr. Farnell[329]--and I cannot state it better--"is that the
Indo-Germanic peoples, on the way to the higher polytheism, passed
through an earlier stage when the objects of cult were beings whom he
designated by the newly-coined words 'Augenblickgoetter' and
'Sondergoetter'" (gods of momentary or limited function). He went further
than this, and claimed that the anthropomorphic gods of Greece and
Italy, of the Indo-Iranians, Persians, and Slavs, were developed out of
these spirits presiding over special functions and particular moments of
human life; but with this latter part of his theory I am not now
concerned. What we want to know now is whether in writing thus of the
Roman Indigitamenta Usener was using a record which really represents an
early stage of religious thought in Italy; and I may add that we should
be glad to know whether his Lithuanian records are also to be
unhesitatingly relied on.[330] As regards Greece, Dr. Farnell has
criticised his theories with considerable effect.

The most recent contribution to the discussion of the Roman part of the
subject is that of Wissowa, who in 1904 published a paper on "True and
False Sondergoetter at Rome";[331] this is a piece of most valuable and
weighty criticism, but extremely difficult to follow and digest. I here
give only the main results of it. Wissowa takes two genuine examples of
Sondergoetter which have come down to us from other sources, and more
directly than those mentioned above: the first from Fabius Pictor, the
oldest Roman historian,[332] and the other from the Acta Fratrum
Arvalium.[333] Fabius said that the flamen (Cerealis?), when sacrificing
to Tellus and Ceres, also invoked the following deities: Vervactor, for
the first ploughing, as Wissowa interprets it; Redarator, for the second
ploughing; Imporcitor, for the harrowing; Insitor, for the sowing;
Oberator, for the top-dressing; Occator, Sarritor, Subrincator, Messor,
Convector, Conditor, Promitor, for subsequent operations up to the
harvest and actual distribution of the corn for food. Secondly, in the
Acta of the Arval Brethren we find, on the occasion of a _piaculum_
caused by the growth of a fig-tree on the roof of the temple of Dea Dia,
at the end of a long list of deities invoked, and before the names of
the _divi_ of the Imperial families, the names of three Sondergoetter,
Adolenda Commolenda Deferunda, and