ty, with the sea,
with the hearth-fire of all Rome. The rest might well be left to
localities or to domestic worship.

From the early days of Rome there existed a calendar for festivals to
certain divinities important to the little growing town, and a code of
ceremonies to be performed in their honour, and of formulae of prayer
to be offered to them. The later Romans, in their characteristic
conservatism, adhered to those festivals, to that ritual, and to those
formulae, even when some of the deities had ceased to be of
appreciable account, and when neither the meaning of the ritual nor
the sense of the old words was any longer understood by the very
priests who used them.

Reflect a moment on this situation. First, we have a number of deities
of the first rank, housed in temples, embodied in statues, and
recognised in all the Roman world; next a number of minor divinities
whose operations and worship may be remotely rural or otherwise local,
and whose functions are by no means always distinguishable from those
of the greater gods; then a series of more or less unintelligible
ceremonials carried out by ancient rule in honour of divinities often
practically forgotten; outside these a number of vague powers
presiding over small domestic and other actions; finally, a peculiar
Roman tendency--in keeping with the last--to erect into divinities,
and to symbolise in statue housed in temples, all manner of abstract
qualities and states, such as Hope, Harmony, Peace, Wealth, Health,
Fame, and Youth.

[Illustration: FIG. 110.--A SACRIFICE.]

Reflect again that, when the Romans, as they spread, came into contact
with Greeks, Egyptians, or other foreigners, they met with deities
whose provinces were necessarily often identical with or closely akin
to their own. Then remember that there is no church and no official
document to define the complete list of Roman gods. Does it not
follow, as a matter of course, on the one hand, that the importation
of new gods was an easy matter, and on the other, that no individual
Roman could draw the line as to the number of even the old-established
deities in whom he should or should not believe?

The guardians of the public religion were satisfied if the due rites
were paid by the state to those deities, on those dates, and precisely
in that manner, which happened to be prescribed in the official
religious books. For the rest they left matters to the individual.

So much it has been necess