amily had the same name, like our surname, such as Tullius or Appius,
the daughters only changing it by making it end in _a_ instead of
_us_, and the men having separate names standing first, such as
Marcus or Lucius, though their sisters were only numbered to distinguish
them.

[Illustration: JUPITER]

Each city had a guardian spirit, each stream its nymph, each wood its
faun; also there were gods to whom the boundary stones of estates were
dedicated. There was a goddess of fruits called Pomona, and a god of
fruits named Vertumnus. In their names the fields and the crops were
solemnly blest, and all were sacred to Saturn. He, according to the old
legends, had first taught husbandry, and when he reigned in Italy there
was a golden age, when every one had his own field, lived by his own
handiwork, and kept no slaves. There was a feast in honor of this time
every year called the Saturnalia, when for a few days the slaves were
all allowed to act as if they were free, and have all kinds of wild
sports and merriment. Afterwards, when Greek learning came in, Saturn
was mixed up with the Greek Kronos, or Time, who devours his offspring,
and the reaping-hook his figures used to carry for harvest became Time's
scythe. The sky-god, Zeus or Deus Pater (or father), was shortened into
Jupiter; Juno was his wife, and Mars was god of war, and in Greek times
was supposed to be the same as Ares; Pallas Athene was joined with the
Latin Minerva; Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, was called Vesta; and,
in truth, we talk of the Greek gods by their Latin names. The old Greek
tales were not known to the Latins in their first times, but only
afterwards learnt from the Greeks. They seem to have thought of their
gods as graver, higher beings, further off, and less capricious and
fanciful than the legends about the weather had made them seem to the
Greeks. Indeed, these Latins were a harder, tougher, graver, fiercer,
more business-like race altogether than the Greeks; not so clever,
thoughtful, or poetical, but with more of what we should now call
sterling stuff in them.

At least so it was with that great nation which spoke their language,
and seems to have been an offshoot from them. Rome, the name of which is
said to mean the famous, is thought to have been at first a cluster of
little villages, with forts to protect them on the hills, and temples in
the forts. Jupiter had a temple on the Capitoline Hill, with cells for
his worship, and th