fact, man's knowledge of the
Divine has greatly advanced; spirits have some slight tendency to become
deities, and magic is in part at least superseded by an orderly round of
sacrifice and prayer, which is performed daily within the house, and
within the boundary of the land at certain seasons of the year. This
stage of settlement and routine was the first great revolution in the
religious experience of the Romans, and supplied the basis of their
national character.

The second revolution which we can clearly discern, and far the most
important as a factor in Roman history, is that of the organisation of
the religion of the city-state of Rome. Doubtless there were stages
intermediate between the two, but they are entirely lost to us. We had
to concentrate our attention on the city of the four regions--the first
city we really know--and to examine the one document which has survived
from it, the so-called calendar of Numa. In my fifth lecture I explained
the nature of that calendar, and noted how it reflects the life of a
people at once agricultural and military, and how it must presuppose the
existence of a highly organised legal priesthood, or of some powerful
genius for political as well as religious legislation. The tradition of
a great priest-king is not wholly to be despised, for it expresses the
feeling of the Romans that religious law and order were indispensable
parts of their whole political and social life. During the rest of these
lectures I have been trying to interrogate this religious calendar, with
such help as could be gained from any other sources, on two points: (1)
the conception, or, if we can venture to use the word, the knowledge,
which the Romans of that early city-state had of the Divine; (2) the
chief forms and methods of their worship. We saw that they did not think
of the divine beings as existing in human form with human weaknesses,
but as invisible and intangible functional powers, _numina_. Each had
its special limited sphere of action; and some were now localised within
the _pomoerium_, or just outside it within the _ager Romanus_, and
worshipped under a particular name. I suggested that this very
settlement had probably some influence in preparing them for assuming a
more definite and personal character, should the chance be given them.
In regard to the forms of cult with which they were propitiated, I found
in the ritual of sacrifice and prayer a genuine advance towards a really
religiou