The Religion of Ancient Rome | Page 4

how far it had retained this character
and what developments it had undergone when it had crystallised into
the 'Religion of Numa.'
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Frazer, Golden Bough, vol. i. pp. 81 ff.
[2] Golden Bough, vol. i. pp. 181-185.
CHAPTER III
MAIN FEATURES OF THE RELIGION OF NUMA
=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 attained

great dignity of conception, and were the centre of the family life, and
to some extent of the family morality, never quite rose to the position
of full-grown gods; while among the spirits of the field the wildness
and impishness of character associated with Faunus and his companion
Inuus--almost the cobolds or hobgoblins of the flocks--reflects clearly
the old 'animistic' belief in the natural evilness of the spirits and their
hostility to men. The notion of the numen is always vague and
indefinite: even its sex may be uncertain. 'Be thou god or goddess' is
the form of address in the farmer's prayer already quoted from Cato: 'be
it male or female' is the constant formula in liturgies and even
dedicatory inscriptions of a much later period.
These spirits are, as we have seen, indwellers in the objects of nature
and controllers of the phenomena of nature: but to the Roman they
were more. Not merely did they inhabit places and things, but they
presided over each phase of natural development, each state or action in
the life of man. Varro, for instance, gives us a list of the deities
concerned in the early life of the child, which, though it bears the marks
of priestly elaboration, may yet be taken as typical of the feeling of the
normal Roman family. There is Vaticanus, who opens the child's mouth
to cry, Cunina, who guards his cradle, Edulia and Potina, who teach
him to eat and drink, Statilinus, who helps him to stand up, Adeona and
Abeona, who watch over his first footstep, and many others each with
his special province of protection or assistance. The farmer similarly is
in the hands of a whole host of divinities who assist him at each stage
of ploughing, hoeing, sowing, reaping, and so forth. If the numen then
lacks personal individuality, he has a very distinct specialisation of
function, and if man's appeal to the divinity is to be successful, he must
be very careful to make it in the right quarter: it was a stock joke in
Roman comedy to make a character 'ask for water from Liber, or wine
from the nymphs.' Hence we find in the prayer formulæ in Cato and
elsewhere the most careful precautions to prevent the accidental
omission of the deity concerned: usually the worshipper will go
through the whole list of the gods who may be thought to have power
in the special circumstances; sometimes he will conclude his prayer
with the formula 'whosoever thou art,' or 'and any other name by which
thou mayest desire to be called.' The numen is thus vague in his

conception but specialised in his function, and so later on, when certain
deities have acquired definite names and become prominent above the
rest, the worshipper in appealing to them will add a cult-title, to
indicate the special character in which he wishes the deity to hear: the
woman in childbirth will appeal to Iuno Lucina, the general praying for
victory to Iuppiter Victor, the man who is taking an oath to Iuppiter as
the deus Fidius. As a still later development the cult-title will, as it
were, break off and set up for itself, usually in the form of an abstract
personification: Iuppiter, in the two special capacities just noted, gives
birth to Victoria and Fides.
The conception of the numen being so formless and indefinite, it is not
surprising that in the genuine Roman religion there should have been
no anthropomorphic representations of the divinity at all. 'For 170
years,' Varro tells us, taking his date from the traditional foundation of
the city in 754 B.C., 'the Romans worshipped their gods without
images,' and he adds the characteristic comment, 'those who introduced
representations among the nations, took away fear and brought in
falsehood.' Symbols of a few deities were no doubt recognised: we
have noticed already the silex of Iuppiter and the boundary-stone of
Terminus, which were probably at an earlier period themselves objects
of worship, and