_di indigetes_, and the localities are usually such as would be
naturally chosen by a pastoral and agricultural people.

Such were roughly the main outlines of the genuine Roman 'theology.'
It has no gods of human form with human relations to one another,
interested in the life of men and capable of the deepest passions of
hatred and affection towards them, such as we meet, for instance, in
the mythology of Greece, but only these impersonal individualities, if
we may so call them, capable of no relation to one another, but able to
bring good or ill to men, localised usually in their habitations, but
requiring no artificial dwelling or elaborate adornment of their abode;
becoming gradually more and more specialised in function, yet gaining
thereby no more real protective care for their worshippers--a cold and
heartless hierarchy, ready to exact their due, but incapable of
inspiring devotion or enthusiasm. Let us ask next how the Romans
conceived of their own relations towards them.

=2. The Relation of Gods and Men.=--The character of the Roman was
essentially practical and his natural mental attitude that of the
lawyer. And so in his relation towards the divine beings whom he
worshipped there was little of sentiment or affection: all must be
regulated by clearly understood principles and carried out with formal
exactness. Hence the _ius sacrum_, the body of rights and duties in the
matter of religion, is regarded as a department of the _ius publicum_,
the fundamental constitution of the state, and it is significant, as
Marquardt has observed, that it was Numa, a king and lawgiver, and not
a prophet or a poet, who was looked upon as the founder of the Roman
religion. Starting from the simple general feeling of a dependence on a
higher power (_religio_), which is common to all religions, the Roman
gives it his own characteristic colour when he conceives of that