EARLY ROMAN RELIGION. 6i 



Silvano fatna est veteres sacrasse Pelasgos, 

 Arvorum pecorisque deo, lucumque diemque 

 Qui primi fines aliquando habuere Latinos. * 



(Verg. Aen. VIII, 600). 



and up to the latest days of the Roman Empire and in the remotest 



provinces we find him retaining this primitive attribute ; whenever a 



forest was cleared, he was first invoked to aid or earlier in history 



not to thwart man's efforts ; and part of the rite consisted in " lus- 



tratio," a purifying of the land from the various wild and hostile 



spirits whose natural abode was in the forest about to be cleared. 



To give an account of some more of the divinities or powers of 

 whom the Romans stood in awe and whom he propitiated, with 

 whom we may almost say he made bargains, we may take those 

 whose names are known to all. Foremost stands Jupiter, who later, 

 as we find him in Vergil, was chief among the gods, ruler of Olym- 

 pus, and identified with the Greek Zeus, but who in the earliest 

 form in which we meet him is sky god, concerned to a certain ex- 

 tent with the crops, especially grapes, and so with his wine festivals 

 in the early calendar. 



Juno at first has, to the Roman, no connection with Jupiter. She 

 stands for womanhood, possibly in connection with her being the 

 moon goddess; she is the guardian of women, as opposed to men, 

 and especially in connection with childbirth and marriage. So much 

 was this the case that in common life women used to speak of their 

 personal Juno, a kind of individual power protecting each woman 

 and with her death passing out of existence too somewhat in the same 

 way as we speak of a " guardian angel." 



Probably the most unchanged worship in the whole of Roman 

 religion was that of Vesta, goddess of the " blazing hearth," whose 

 sacred fire was kept forever burning by the vestal virgins, chosen 

 from the noblest daughters of Rome; but even she is not one but 

 many, for each household had its own Vesta, just as the State had 

 its Vesta in the Forum. Here we see very clearly the connection 

 between the deity and the condition of early life of the nation ; in 

 the primitive community the King's hearth is of great practical 

 utility, for there was kept perpetually burning the fire from which 

 the individual householder might draw ; hence it was the duty of the 

 King's daughters to care for it and to keep the flame perpetually 

 alight. 



* Legend tells that the Pelasgi of old who first occupied the land of 

 Latium, dedicated a grove and a day of festival to Silvanus, god of wood- 

 land and of cattle. 



