ntroduced, such
as the _lectisternium_, in which couches were arranged, each with the
image of a god and that of a goddess, and tables spread to regale the
recumbent deities. The very notion of deity was changed; the Greek
god, represented by an image in human form and moving freely in the
upper world, was substituted for the Latin god who was the unseen
side of an act or process or quality, from which he had his name,
and apart from which he was not. The following is a list of the
principal Roman gods and of the Greek ones with whom they were
identified:--Jupiter (Zeus), Juno (Hera), Neptunus (Poseidon),
Minerva (Athene), Mars (Ares), Venus (Aphrodite), Diana (Artemis),
Vulcanus (Hephaestus), Vesta (Hestia), Mercurius (Hermes), Ceres
(Demeter). The identifications are by no means accurate; Jupiter and
Vesta, as we have seen, are the only two Roman gods who are really
identical with Greek gods, the other equations are founded on
accidental resemblances, and are more arbitrary than real. The result
of them was, however, that the Romans forgot to a large extent their
own gods, and got Greek ones instead. With the divine figures they
took over the mythology of Greece, and thus the gods came to be well
known with all their weaknesses, instead of as before surrounded with
mystery and awe. The worship founded on the earlier conception of the
deity, and kept up with unwavering regularity, was inapplicable to
these new gods, and inevitably lost all its reality. This is not the
only cause, but it is one of the chief causes which prepared for the
fearful spectacle presented by Roman religion at the end of the
Republic, when men of learning and distinction officiated as the
heads of a religion in which they had no belief, and which they
scoffed at in their writings.

Among the worships which came to Rome from the East there were
several which are not of Greek, but of Oriental origin. The worship
of Cybele belongs to Asia Minor, though it had spread over Greece;
that of Dionysus also came to Greece from Asia. The practice of both
these cults was accompanied by excitement and self-abandonment on the
part of the worshippers; and they formed a great contrast to the
staid and formal worship of the Romans, the only admissible passion
in which was a calm passion for correctness. The worship of Cybele
was carried on by eunuchs, it had noisy processions, and depended on
begging for its support. When the Romans brought it to their city,
t