is
not individuals who are worshipped at their festivals, but the dead
in the abstract, the former upholders of the family or of the people.

[Footnote 1: See on this Mr. Jevons's preface to Plutarch's _Romane
Questions_ (Nutt, 1892); which deserves to be published in a more
accessible form.]

The character of Roman worship is determined by the nature of its
objects. As each of the gods has his basis in a material object or
action, there can be no need of any images of them; where the object
or the act is, there is the god, his character is expressed in it and
not to be expressed otherwise. Nor could such gods require any
temples. And what need of priests for them, when every one who knew
their names (a great deal depended on that) could place himself in
contact with them as soon as he saw the object or took in hand the
action behind which they stood? Nor can many stories be told about
gods like these,--the Romans have no mythology. The beings they
worship are not persons but abstractions. They have just enough
character to be male or female, but they cannot move about or act
independently of their natural basis; they cannot marry, nor breed
scandal, nor make war. Nor can there be any motive for identifying
with such beings a great man who has died; where there are no true
gods, there cannot be any demi-gods or heroes. Only a very limited
power can possibly be put forth by such beings; all they can do is to
give or to withhold prosperity, each in the narrow section of affairs
he has to do with.

The aim of worship where such a set of beings is concerned, is to get
hold of the spirit or god connected with the act one has in view, and
so to deal with him as to avert his disfavour, which the Roman always
apprehended, and gain his concurrence. The house-gods are beings
possessing a stated cult, but outside the house-cult the worshipper
has to face the question at each emergency which god he ought to
address. He might choose the wrong one, which would make his act of
worship vain. If he names the god correctly he will have a hold on
him; in a case of uncertainty, therefore, he names a number of gods,
in the hope that one of them will be the right one; or he invokes
them all. "Whether thou be god or goddess" he will further say, if he
is in doubt on that point, "or by whatever name thou desirest to be
called." Each god has his proper style and title, and it is vain to
approach him without these; lists of the various gods