The Religion of Ancient Rome | Page 3

to the legend, 'the god'
refused to budge even to make room for Iuppiter. The same notion is
most likely at the root of the two great domestic cults of Vesta, 'the
hearth,' and Ianus, 'the door,' though a more spiritual idea was soon
associated with them; we may notice too in this connection the worship
of springs, summed up in the subsequent deity Fons, and of rivers, such
as Volturnus, the cult-name of the Tiber.
=3. Worship of Trees.=--But most conspicuous among the cults of
natural objects, as in so many primitive religions, is the worship of
trees. Here, though doubtless at first the tree was itself the object of
veneration, surviving instances seem rather to belong to the later period
when it was regarded as the abode of the spirit. We may recognise a
case of this sort in the ficus Ruminalis, once the recipient of worship,
though later legend, which preferred to find an historical or mythical

explanation of cults, looked upon it as sacred because it was the scene
of the suckling of Romulus and Remus by the wolf. Another fig-tree
with a similar history is the caprificus of the Campus Martius,
subsequently the site of the worship of Iuno Caprotina. A more
significant case is the sacred oak of Iuppiter Feretrius on the Capitol,
on which the spolia opima were hung after the triumph--probably in
early times a dedication of the booty to the spirit inhabiting the tree.
Outside Rome, showing the same ideas at work among neighbouring
peoples, was the 'golden bough' in the grove of Diana at Aricia. Nor
was it only special trees which were thus regarded as the home of a
deity; the tree in general is sacred, and any one may chance to be
inhabited by a spirit. The feeling of the country population on this point
comes out clearly in the prayer which Cato recommends his farmer to
use before making a clearing in a wood: 'Be thou god or goddess, to
whom this grove is sacred, be it granted to us to make propitiatory
sacrifice to thee with a pig for the clearing of this sacred spot'; here we
have a clear instance of the tree regarded as the dwelling of the sacred
power, and it is interesting to compare the many similar examples
which[2] Dr. Frazer has collected from different parts of the world.
=4. Worship of Animals.=--Of the worship of animals we have
comparatively little evidence in Roman religion, though we may
perhaps detect it in a portion of the mysterious ritual of the Lupercalia,
where the Luperci dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed
goats and smeared their faces with the blood, thus symbolically trying
to bring themselves into communion with the sacred animal. We may
recognise it too in the association of particular animals with divinities,
such as the sacred wolf and woodpecker of Mars, but on the whole we
may doubt whether the worship of animals ever played so prominent a
part in Roman religion as the cult of other natural objects.
=5. Animism.=--Such are some of the survivals of very early stages of
religious custom which still kept their place in the developed religion
of Rome, but by far the most important element in it, which might
indeed be described as its 'immediate antecedent,' is the state of
religious feeling to which anthropologists have given the name of
'Animism.' As far as we can follow the development of early religions,

this attitude of mind seems to be the direct outcome of the failure of
magic. Primitive man begins to see that neither he nor his magicians
really possess that occult control over the forces of nature which was
the supposed basis of magic: the charm fails, the spell does not produce
the rain and when he looks for the cause, he can only argue that these
things must be in the hands of some power higher than his own. The
world then and its various familiar objects become for him peopled
with spirits, like in character to men, but more powerful, and his
success in life and its various operations depends on the degree in
which he is able to propitiate these spirits and secure their co-operation.
If he desires rain, he must win the favour of the spirit who controls it, if
he would fell a tree and suffer no harm, he must by suitable offerings
entice the indwelling spirit to leave it. His 'theology' in this stage is the
knowledge of the various spirits and their dwellings, his ritual the due
performance of sacrifice for purposes of propitiation and expiation. It
was in this state of religious feeling that the ancestors of Rome must
have lived before they founded their agricultural settlement on the
Palatine: we must try now to see