and of their
correct styles were therefore drawn up in very early times to serve
as guides to the subject. The Latin word "indigito," to point out,
from "digitus," a finger, is the term used of addressing a god; the
lists of deities with their proper appellations were called
"indigitamenta"; and the gods named in them "Dii indigetes." The act
of worship is grave and formal; it has to be done with precision and
in strict accordance with the rules; silence is commanded; the
sacrificer repeats the prayer proper for the occasion after some one
who knows it by rote; the worshippers veil their heads. In this the
Roman ritual is markedly different from the Greek. Mommsen says the
Greek prayed bareheaded, because his prayer was contemplation,
looking at and to the gods; and the Roman with head covered, because
his prayer was an exercise of thought; and in this he sees a
characteristic indication of the difference between the two
religions. A more modern interpretation of the Roman practice is that
it arose from the fear that the worshipper might see the god whom he
has just summoned by name, which would be dangerous. If any mistake
is made in worship, the act is vain and has to be done over again.

The Great Gods.--The foregoing is the logic of the system on which
the Roman religion, as distinguished from the foreign elements
afterwards added to it, was based; the religion, however, does not
come into view historically till it has begun to rise above such a
worship of abstractions or of petty spirits, towards a worship of
gods. It was apparently by the growth of larger social organisms that
the Latin tribes advanced to the worship of greater gods. While the
family religions continued to the end, the tribe had, as in the case
of other early peoples, a larger religion than the family, and a
union of tribes produced a religion on a still greater scale. The
history of early Rome consists of a succession of such fusions of
tribes into a larger political whole. When history opens, "Rome is a
fully-formed and united city"; but Rome is made up of several tribes,
which maintain many separate institutions. The religion of after
times bears witness to these successive unions. "Deus Fidius," the
god of good faith, is the sacred impersonation of an alliance. Mars
and Quirinus are precisely similar to each other, and each has a
flamen, or blower of the sacrificial flame, and a staff of twelve
salii or dancers. Mars is the Roman, Quirinus t