reignty of
the community, between the hereditary privilege of royal and noble
houses and the unconditional legal equality of the citizens, belong
altogether to a later age.

Even the elements of science and religion show traces of a community
of origin. The numbers are the same up to one hundred (Sanscrit
-satam-, -ekasatam-, Latin -centum-, Greek --e-katon--, Gothic
-hund-); and the moon receives her name in all languages from the
fact that men measure time by her (-mensis-). The idea of Deity
itself (Sanscrit -devas-, Latin -deus-, Greek --theos--), and many
of the oldest conceptions of religion and of natural symbolism,
belong to the common inheritance of the nations. The conception,
for example, of heaven as the father and of earth as the mother of
being, the festal expeditions of the gods who proceed from place
to place in their own chariots along carefully levelled paths,
the shadowy continuation of the soul's existence after death, are
fundamental ideas of the Indian as well as of the Greek and Roman
mythologies. Several of the gods of the Ganges coincide even
in name with those worshipped on the Ilissus and the Tiber:--thus
the Uranus of the Greeks is the Varunas, their Zeus, Jovis pater,
Diespiter is the Djaus pita of the Vedas. An unexpected light has
been thrown on various enigmatical forms in the Hellenic mythology
by recent researches regarding the earlier divinities of India. The
hoary mysterious forms of the Erinnyes are no Hellenic invention;
they were immigrants along with the oldest settlers from the East.
The divine greyhound Sarama, who guards for the Lord of heaven the
golden herd of stars and sunbeams and collects for him the nourishing
rain-clouds as the cows of heaven to the milking, and who moreover
faithfully conducts the pious dead into the world of the blessed,
becomes in the hands of the Greeks the son of Sarama, Sarameyas,
or Hermeias; and the enigmatical Hellenic story of the stealing
of the cattle of Helios, which is beyond doubt connected with the
Roman legend about Cacus, is now seen to be a last echo (with the
meaning no longer understood) of that old fanciful and significant
conception of nature.

Graeco-Italian Culture

The task, however, of determining the degree of culture which
the Indo-Germans had attained before the separation of the stocks
properly belongs to the general history of the ancient world. It
is on the other hand the special task of Italian history to