subordinate position to the old settlers _(indigites[271]_).

That the races of Italy, among whom the Latin language originated, were of
the same great Asiatic stock as the Greeks, Germans, Kelts, and Slavic
tribes, is sufficiently proved by the unimpeachable evidence of language.
The old Latin roots and grammatic forms all retain the analogies of the
Aryan families. Their gods and their religion bear marks of the same
origin, yet with a special and marked development. For the Roman nation
was derived from at least three secondary sources,--the Latins, Sabines,
and Etruscans. To these may be added the Pelasgian settlers on the western
coast (unless these are included in the Etruscan element), and the very
ancient race of Siculi or Sikels, whose name suggests, by its phonetic
analogy, a branch of that widely wandering race, the Kelts[272]. But the
obscure and confused traditions of these Italian races help us very little
in our present inquiry. That some of the oldest Roman deities were Latin,
others Sabine, and others Etruscan, is, however, well ascertained. From
the Latin towns Alba and Lavinium came the worship of Vesta, Jupiter,
Juno, Saturn and Tellus, Diana and Mars. Niebuhr thinks that the Sabine
ritual was adopted by the Romans, and that Varro found the real remains of
Sabine chapels on the Quirinal. From Etruria came the system of
divination. Some of the oldest portions of the Roman religion were derived
from agriculture. The god Saturn took his name from sowing. Picus and
Faunus were agricultural gods. Pales, the goddess of herbage, had
offerings of milk on her festivals. The Romans, says Doellinger, had no
cosmogony of their own; a practical people, they took the world as they
found it, and did not trouble themselves about its origin. Nor had they
any favorite deities; they worshipped according to what was proper, every
one in turn at the right time. Though the most polytheistic of religions,
there ran through their system an obscure conception of one supreme being,
Jupiter Optimus-Maximus, of whom all the other deities were but qualities
and attributes. But they carried furthest of all nations this
personifying and deifying of every separate power, this minute subdivision
of the deity. Heffter[273] says this was carried to an extent which was
almost comic. They had divinities who presided over talkativeness and
silence, over beginnings and endings, over the manuring of the fields, and
over all household transa