on of the annalists. As Gellius
records it, it stands thus: Scipio was wont to ascend to the temple just
before daylight, to order the _cella Iovis_ to be opened for him, and
there to remain alone for a long time, as if taking counsel with the
god about the affairs of the State. The dogs, it was said, which guarded
the entrance, astonished the temple-keepers by treating him always with
respect, while they would attack or bark at others.[508]

The reader may remark, that during the last few minutes I have wandered
quite away from the Roman religion which we have so far been trying to
understand, and he will be right. I have but just touched on this great
cult, which properly belongs to Rome of the Republic, in order to show
how great a change must have taken place, how great a revolution must
have been consummated, when this temple arose on its Etruscan
substructures. We have marked two forward steps in the social and
political experience of the Romans: the settlement of the family on the
land and the organisation of the City-state with its calendar. Here is a
third, the liberation of that State from a foreign dominion, and the
development, in matters both internal and external, which subjection and
liberation alike brought with them. In regard to religious experience,
the first produced the ordered worship of the household, which had a
lasting effect on the Roman character; the second produced the _ius
divinum_, the priesthoods and the ritual for the service of the various
_numina_ which had consented to take up their abode in the city and its
precincts. These two taken together changed doubt and anxiety into
confidence, stilled the _religio_ natural to uncivilised man, and
developed the machinery of magic into forms and ceremonies which were
more truly religious. Now we note a third great social step forward,
which brings with it a new conception and expression of the religious
unity of the State; henceforward, alongside of a multiplicity of cults
and of priests attached to them, we have one central worship to which
all free citizens may resort, and a trinity of guardian deities, of whom
one, Jupiter Best and Greatest, is the one presiding genius of the whole
State.

Lastly, there can hardly be a doubt that this new cult marks a more
extensive communication with neighbouring peoples than the State had as
yet experienced or encouraged. Etruria, Latium, and Greece, all seem to
have had a hand in it. Of its relation to t