ctions. And as the number increased, it became
always more difficult to recollect which was the right god to appeal to
under any special circumstances. So that often they were obliged to call
on the gods in general, and, dismissing the whole polytheistic pantheon,
to invoke some unknown god, or the supreme being. Sometimes, however, in
these emergencies, new deities were created for the occasion. Thus they
came to invoke the pestilence, defeat in battle, blight, etc., as
dangerous beings whose hostility must be placated by sacrifices. A better
part of their mythology was the worship of Modesty (Pudicitia), Faith or
Fidelity (Fides), Concord (Concordia), and the gods of home. It was the
business of the pontiffs to see to the creation of new divinities. So the
Romans had a goddess Pecunia, money (from Pecus, cattle), dating from the
time when the circulating medium consisted in cows and sheep. But when
copper money came, a god of copper was added, AEsculanus; and when silver
money was invented, a god Argentarius arrived.

Sec. 2. The Gods of Rome.

Creuzer, in speaking of the Italian worship, says that "one fact which
emerges more prominently than any other is the concourse of Oriental,
Pelasgic, Samothracian, and Hellenic elements in the religion of Rome." In
like manner the Roman deities bear traces of very different sources. We
have found reason to believe, in our previous chapters, that the religion
of Egypt had a twofold origin, from Asiatic and African elements, and that
the religion of Greece, in like manner, was derived from Egyptian and
Pelasgic sources. So, too, we find the institutions and people of Rome
partaking of a Keltic and Pelasgic origin. Let us now see what was the
character of the Roman deities.

* * * * *

One of the oldest and also most original of the gods of Rome was the
Sabine god JANUS. He was the deity who presided over beginnings and
endings, over the act of opening and shutting. Hence the month which
opened the year, January, received its name from this god, who also gave
his name to Janua, a gate or door[274], and probably to the hill
Janiculum[275].

The Romans laid great stress on all beginnings; believing that the
commencement of any course of conduct determined, by a sort of magical
necessity, its results. Bad success in an enterprise they attributed to a
wrong beginning, and the only remedy, therefore, was to begin anew. Ovid
(Fasti, I. 179) mak