The Historians' History of the World 05

What is most striking at first is how all these gods seem without life. They have no history attached to them and not even a legend has been given them. All that is known of them is that at a certain crisis they must be prayed to and they can then render service. Once that moment passes, they are forgotten. They do not possess real names; those given to them do not distinguish them individually, but only indicate the function they fulfil. As a rule this name is in the form of an epithet; from this it is probable that it was not always employed alone, and that at first it was a simple emblem. It can be concluded with a great deal of apparent truth that originally the name described a powerful divinity, or even the divinity in general, the father all-powerful, as he was called so long as he limited his action to a special purpose. Thus the two gods Vaticanus and Fabulinas would be no other than the divinity itself, even when it watches over the first cries and first steps of the child.

The gods were not quite so numerous in the first ages, and it was then necessary to give each of them many more functions. These attributes were expressed, as in Christian litanies, by epithets, the list of which, more or less lengthy according to the importance of the god, followed after his name. As each invocation appealed to one of the faculties, and not to the power of the god, the epithet was practically much more important than the name and was employed alone. Soon the relationship between the name and the qualifications which existed primitively was forgotten or lost and then the epithets became divine. Thus the different functions of one god ended by being attached to independent gods. It was at the time of these changes that the Indigitamenta

were drawn up. They are interesting to us, as they make us grasp Roman polytheism just when it is being formed, but they also show us that it is an unfinished polytheism. After creating all these gods, Rome did not know how to make them life-like. They remained vague, undecided, floating; they never attained, as the Greek gods, precise forms with distinct features. This, besides, is the general character of the Roman religion, and the gods of Rome always resembled those of the Indigitamenta

.

The Italian religion was always more respectful and timid than the Greek. The Roman remained at a farther distance from his gods, he dared not approach them, he would have been afraid to look at them. If the Roman veiled his face when accomplishing religious duties, it was not, as Virgil says, because he was afraid of having his attention taken off what he was doing, but in order not to risk seeing the god he is praying to. He solicits his presence, he likes to know that he is near him, listening to his vows in order to grant them, but he would have been frightened if he had seen him. “Deliver us,” says Ovid in his prayer to Pallas, “from seeing the dryads or Diana’s bath, or Faunus when he runs across the fields in the daytime”; and until the end of paganism the Roman peasant was very afraid, when returning home in the evening, of meeting a Faun in his path. The result of this timidity of the Italians, who did not dare look at the gods in the face, is that they saw them vaguely. They have not got clear outlines, and are represented rather by symbols than by images; here Mars is adored under the form of a lance struck in the ground, in another place a simple stone represents the great Jupiter.

According to Varro, Rome remained 170 years without statues; the idea of placing them in the temples came from abroad. It was to imitate Etruria that a painted wooden Jupiter was placed in the Capitol; on the eve of festivals they gave him a coat of paint for him to appear in all his glory. These ancient customs were never quite lost, they were preserved in the country, where the peasants honoured the gods by covering old trunks of trees with bands, and in piously pouring oil on blocks of stone. At Rome, even whilst all the temples were being filled by Grecian masterpieces the antique Vesta would not allow a single statue in her sanctuary; she was only represented by the sacred flame which was never put out.

It is probable, then, that if Rome had not known Greece, anthropomorphism would have stopped short. The Roman has an instinctive repugnance to making his gods beings too much like us; to him they are not real persons, having an individual existence, but only divine manifestations, numina; and this name by which he calls them indicates perfectly the idea he has of them. Every time the divinity seems to reveal itself to the world in some manner (and as he is very religious, he believes he sees him everywhere), he notes with care this new revelation, gives it a name and worships it. These gods he creates every minute are nothing else but divine acts, and that is why they are so numerous.