68 QUEEN'S QUARTERLY. 



sides. Of this, however, I shall speak more at length when dealing 

 with the worship. 



Before leaving this part of my subject, I cannot resist mention- 

 ing the hypothesis that has been put forward as regards these func- 

 tional divinities of the Romans. It is that they really represent an 

 advanced stage of religion, akin to Monotheism. Most of the names 

 are epithets and adjectives, and in all probability there was originally 

 a noun belonging to them ; really they were all epithets of one great 

 deity, or, as some are masculine and some feminine, of a great male 

 and a great female deity. The noun fell out of use, but was still 

 present to the mind of the Roman, and thus his regiment of divine 

 names are not really designations of different persons but titles of 

 the same person, supposed to be present alike in all these numberless 

 manifestations. Thus the god who helped the child to speak was, 

 when addressed in full, " Divus Pater Vaticanus." And a parallel is 

 found in the Christian religion in the manifold epithets of the Deity. 



Such a hypothesis, backed by the authority of Gaston Boissier 

 amongst others, is diametrically opposed to the view of these divini- 

 ties that I have been presenting, and I think could not be held by a 

 student of the earliest forms of religion. I will do no more than sug- 

 gest reasons for refusing to accept it. 



(1) In the first place it asserts that suddenly in the process of 

 evolving a higher conception of the unity of the Deity, we find at 

 Rome a decadence, a step backward, a loss of the more embracing 

 conception, a change from comparative simplicity to vague com- 

 plexity and confusion. Historically no such change can be found in 

 the case of any other nation, nor in any other stage of religious de- 

 velopment. Logically the loss of a higher category, and the adoption 

 of an infinitely higher one, is not one that we can find in the evolu- 

 tion of thought. 



(2) In the second place we can find no reason to account for 

 the change, even granting it to be possible. The only explanation 

 put forward is that, while the epithet remained prominent, the name 

 of the god gradually was forgotten and finally the fact that there was 

 an all-supreme god in all these manifestations grew vaguer. Forget- 

 fulness may be a characteristic of the individual in mundane matters, 

 but not so in matters spiritual and least of all in a primitive religion, 

 and one of the most marked characteristics of Roman religion, as I 

 hope to show shortly, is its long memory, its minute observance of 

 old forms, remaining unchanged for centuries, so that the Roman is 

 the last man to suspect of having forgotten his former approach to- 



