iness, which was to make Rome the mistress of the
world. The gods of Rome, says Hegel, are not human beings, like those of
Greece, but soulless machines, gods made by the understanding, even when
borrowed from Greek story. They were worshipped also in the interest of
the practical understanding, as givers of earthly fortune. The Romans had
no real reverence for their gods; they worshipped them in no spirit of
adoring love, but always for some useful object. It was a utilitarian
worship. Accordingly the practical faculties, engaged in useful arts, were
deified. There was a Jupiter Pistor, presiding over bakers. There was a
goddess of ovens; and a Juno Moneta, who took care of the coin. There was
a goddess who presided over doing nothing, Tranquillitas Vacuna; and even
the plague had an altar erected to it. But, after all, no deities were so
great, in the opinion of the Romans, as Rome itself. The chief distinction
of these deities was that they belonged to the Roman state[269].

Cicero considers the Romans to be the most religious of all nations,
because they carried their religion into all the details of life. This is
true; but one might as well consider himself a devout worshipper of iron
or of wood, because he is always using these materials, in doors and out,
in his parlor, kitchen, and stable.

As the religion of Rome had no doctrinal system, its truths were
communicated mostly by spectacles and ceremonies, which chiefly consisted
in the wholesale slaughter of men and animals. There was something
frightful in the extent to which this was carried; for when cruelty
proceeds from a principle and purpose, it is far worse than when arising
from brutal passion. An angry man may beat his wife; but the deliberate,
repeated, and ingenious torments of the Inquisition, the massacre of
thousands of gladiators in a Roman amphitheatre, or the torture of
prisoners by the North American Indians, are all parts of a system, and
reinforced by considerations of propriety, duty, and religious reverence.

Mommsen remarks[270], that the Roman religion in all its details was a
reflection of the Roman state. When the constitution and institutions of
Rome changed, their religion changed with them. One illustration of this
correspondence he finds in the fact that when the Romans admitted the
people of a conquered state to become citizens of Rome, their gods were
admitted with them; but in both cases the new citizens _(novensides_)
occupied a