The Religion of Numa | Page 8

not of constructive fire. Even the
great god Juppiter who was destined to become almost identical with
the name and fame of Rome was not yet a god of the state and politics,
but merely the sky-god, especially the lightning god, Juppiter Feretrius,
the "striker," who had a little shrine on the Capitoline where later the
great Capitoline temple of Juppiter Optimus Maximus was to stand.
Another curious characteristic of this early age, which, I think, has
never been commented on, is the extraordinarily limited number of
goddesses. Vesta is the only one who seems to stand by herself without
a male parallel. Each of the others is merely the contrasted potentiality
in a pair of which the male is much more famous, and the only ones in
these pairs who ever obtained a pronounced individuality did so
because their cult was afterwards reinforced by being associated with

some extra-Roman cult. The best illustration of this last is Juno. We
may go further and say that it-seems highly probable that the worship
of female deities was in the main confined to the women of the
community, while the men worshipped the gods. This distinction
extended even to the priesthoods where the wife of the priest of a god
was the priestess of the corresponding goddess. Such a state of affairs is
doubly interesting in view of the pre-eminence of female deities in the
early Greek world, which has been so strikingly shown by Miss Jane
Harrison in her recent book, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion.
The most vital question which can be put to almost any religion is that
in regard to its expansive power and its adaptability to new conditions.
Society is bound to undergo changes, and a young social organism, if
normal, is continually growing new cells. New conditions are arising
and new interests are coming to the front. In addition, if the growth is
to be continuous, new material is being constantly absorbed, and the
simple homogeneous character of the old society is being entirely
changed by the influx of foreign elements. This is what occurred in
ancient Rome, and it is because ancient Roman religion was not
capable of organic development from within, that the curious things
happened to it which our history has to record. It is these strange
external accretions which lend the chief interest to the story, while at
the same time they conceal the original form so fully as to render the
writing of a history of Roman religion extremely difficult.
Yet it must not be supposed because Roman religion was unable to
adapt itself to the new constitution of society with its contrasted classes,
and to the new commercial and political interests which attracted the
attention of the upper classes, that it was absolutely devoid within itself,
within its own limitations, of a certain capability of development. For
several centuries after outside influences began to affect Rome, her
original religion kept on developing alongside of the new forms. The
manner in which it developed is thoroughly significant of the original
national character of the Romans.
We have seen that from the very beginning the nature of the gods as

powers rather than personalities tended to emphasise the value and
importance of the name, which usually indicated the particular function
or speciality of each deity and was very often the only thing known
about him. In the course of time as the original name of the deity began
to be thought of entirely as a proper name without any meaning, rather
than as a common noun explaining the nature of the god to which it
was attached, it became necessary to add to the original name some
adjective which would adequately describe the god and do the work
which the name by itself had originally done. And as the nature of the
various deities grew more complicated along with the increasing
complications of daily life, new adjectives were added, each one
expressing some particular phase of the god's activity. Such an
adjective was called a cognomen, and was often of very great
importance because it began to be felt that a god with one adjective, i.e.
invoked for one purpose, was almost a different god from the same god
with a different adjective, i.e. invoked for another purpose. Thus a
knowledge of these adjectives was almost as necessary as a knowledge
of the name of the god. The next step in the development was one
which followed very easily. These important adjectives began to be
thought of as having a value and an existence in themselves, apart from
the god to which they were attached. The grammatical change which
accompanied this psychological movement was the transfer of the
adjective into an abstract noun. Both adjectives and abstract nouns
express quality, but the