the white heifer of the
Alban cult--which his predecessor had vowed, and himself to bind his
successor to a like sacrifice; and this he did on behalf of patrician
and plebeian alike. Here the victorious general was to deposit his
spoils, reaching the temple in the solemn procession of the _triumphus_,
and wearing the _ornamenta_ of the deity himself; for here, contrary to
all precedent in the worship of Romans, there was an image of the god
wrought in terra cotta and brought from Etruria.[505] It is in
connection with such solemn events as these that we may find the origin
of those imposing processions which for centuries were to impress the
minds of the Roman people, and indeed of their enemies also, with the
might and magnificence of their Empire; for apart from the triumphal
processions with which we are all familiar, the scene at the entrance of
new consuls on their office must have been most impressive. They were
accompanied by the other magistrates, the Senate, the priests in their
robes of office, and by an immense crowd of citizens. After the ceremony
the Senate met _in the temple_ to transact the first religious business
of the year. Here too the tribal assembly met for the purpose of
enrolling the new levies before each season of war, in order that the
youths who were to fight the battles of Rome might realise the presence
of Rome's great protecting deity. Even in the most degenerate days of
the Roman religion, though Jupiter had suffered from the ridicule of
playwrights or the speculations of philosophers, an orator's appeal to
the Best and Greatest looking down on the Forum from his seat above it,
could not fail to move the hearers; "Ille, ille Iuppiter restitit,"
cried Cicero in the peril of the Catilinarian conspiracy, "ille
Capitolium, ille haec templa, ille cunctam urbem, ille vos omnes salvos
esse voluit."[506]

Nor was it only the State as represented by its officials that could and
did address itself to the worship of this great god. It seems probable
that the new idea of a single guardian deity, with his two attendant
goddesses, for which the Romans were indebted to the genius (whoever he
may have been) who released them from the yoke of the Etruscan, opened
the cult to the individual in a way which must have been a novelty in
the religious life of the people.[507] The most memorable example of
this is in the famous story told of Scipio, the conqueror of Hannibal,
which is not likely to be an inventi