I wish to express my warm thanks to Mr. W. Warde Fowler for his kindness in reading my proofs, and for many valuable hints and suggestions. C.B. Balliol College , Jan 25th, 1907 ....

The conditions of our knowledge of the native religion of early Rome may perhaps be best illustrated by a parallel from Roman archæology. The visitor to the Roman Forum at the present day, if he wishes to reconstruct in imagination the Forum of the early Republic, must not merely 'think away' many strata of later buildings, but, we are told, must picture to himself a totally different orientation of the whole: the upper layer of remains, which he sees before him, is for his purpose in most cases

In every early religion there will of course be found, apart from external influence, traces of its own internal development, of stages by which it must have advanced from a mass of vague and primitive belief and custom to the organised worship of a civilised community. The religion of Rome is no exception to this rule; we can detect in its later practice evidences of primitive notions and habits which it had in common with other semi-barbarous peoples, and we shall see that the leading idea in

1. Theology. —The characteristic appellation of a divine spirit in the oldest stratum of the Roman religion is not deus , a god, but rather numen , a power: he becomes deus when he obtains a name, and so is on the way to acquiring a definite personality, but in origin he is simply the 'spirit' of the 'animistic' period, and retains something of the spirit's characteristics. Thus among the divinities of the household we shall see later that the Genius and even the Lar Familiaris, though they atta

After this sketch of the main features which we must expect to find in Roman religion, we may attempt to look a little more in detail at its various departments, but before doing so it is necessary to form some notion of the situation and character of the Roman community: religion is not a little determined by men's natural surroundings and occupations. The subject is naturally one of considerable controversy, but certain facts of great significance for our purpose may fairly be taken as establi

1. The Deities. —The worship of the household seems to have originated, as has been suggested, in the sense of the sacredness of certain objects closely bound up with the family life—the door, the protection against the external world, by which the household went out to work in the morning and returned at evening, the hearth, the giver of warmth and nourishment, and the store-cupboard, where was preserved the food for future use. At first, in all probability, the worship was actually of the obje

The life of the early Roman in the fields, his activities, his hopes and fears, are reflected in the long list of agricultural festivals which constitute the greater part of the celebrations in the Calendar, and follow closely the seasons and occupations of the agricultural year. We are, of course, in the Calendar dealing, to speak strictly, with the worship of the state, and not with the semi-private festivals of groups of farmers, but in many instances, such as the Robigalia, the state seems o

Since, in the matter of religion, the Roman state is in the main but the agricultural household magnified, we shall not, in considering its worship, be entering on a new stratum of ideas, but rather looking at the development of notions and sentiments already familiar. To deal, however, with the state-worship in full would not only far exceed the limits of this sketch, but would lead us away from religious ideas into the region of what we might now call 'ecclesiastical management.' I propose the

So far we have been considering the regular relations of man and god, seen in recurring or special offerings, in vows and in acts of purification and lustration—all based on the contract-notion, all endeavours on man's part to fulfil his bounden duty, that the gods may be constrained in turn to theirs. But so strong was the feeling of divine presence and influence in the Roman's mind, that he was not content with doing his best by these regular means to secure the favour of the gods, but wished

It might be said that a religion—the expression of man's relation to the unseen—has not necessarily any connection with morality—man's action in himself and towards his neighbours: that an individual—or even a nation—might perfectly fulfil the duties imposed by the 'powers above,' without being influenced in conduct and character. Such a view might seem to find an apt illustration in the religion of Rome: the ceremonial pietas towards the gods appears to have little to do with the making of man