rt and comfort from the Unseen, it had
to be satisfied by giving him new gods to worship in new ways, gods from
Greece and the East, some of them concealed under Latin names, but still
aliens, not citizens of his own State, aliens with whom he had little or
nothing in common, who had no home in his patriotic feeling, no place in
his religious experience.[593] As I said at the beginning of the last
lecture, we must not underrate the religiousness of the Roman
character, which was never entirely lost; but the secret of its
comparative uselessness lies in this--that the natural desire to be
right with the Power manifesting itself in the universe, and to know
more of that Power, became weakened and destroyed by an over-scrupulous
attention to the means taken to realise it, and by the introduction of
foreign methods which had no root in the mental fibre of the people, and
reflected no part of its experience. Religion was effectually divorced
from life and morality.

NOTES TO LECTURE XII

[556] See Mulder, _De notione conscientiae, quae et
qualis fuerit Romanis_, Leyden, 1908, cap. 2. On p. 56
he quotes Luthard (_Die antike Ethik_, p. 131), who says
of the Roman religion that it was even more an affair of
the State than with any other people; hence its peculiar
legal character. Though Mulder overworks his point, his
chapter (especially p. 61 foll.) is full of interest.

[557] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 431. The first chapter of
Ambrosch's _Studien und Andeutungen_, in which the
nature and history of the Regia was first really
investigated, is still valuable. An excellent short
account is given by Mr. Marindin in his article in the
_Dict. of Antiquities_, ed. 2. It is now generally
maintained that the Regia in historical times was rather
a building for sacred purposes than a residence for a
man and his family, and this I hold to be correct; but
it may for all that have originally been the residence
of the Rex and of the Pont. Max. when the Rex had
disappeared.

[558] See Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Literatur_, i. 43,
where a succinct account is given of modern opinion as
to the so-called _ius Papirianum_. The main argument for
the late date of the collection is that Cicero does not
seem to have known of it when he wrote the letter _ad
Fam._ ix. 21 in 46 B.C. This of course in no way affects
the primitive character of the