The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire. Glover Terrot Reaveley

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from even a cursory survey of Ovid's Fasti, for example, or Tertullian's Apology, or some of the chapters of the fourth book of Augustine's City of God. "When," asks Augustine, "can I ever mention in one passage of this book all the names of gods and goddesses, which they have scarcely been able to compass in great volumes, seeing that they allot to every individual thing the special function of some divinity?" He names a few of the gods of agriculture – Segetia, Tutilina, Proserpina, Nodutus, Volutina, Patelana, Lacturnus, Matuta, etc. "I do not mention all."[30] "Satan and his angels have filled the whole world," said Tertullian.[31]

      Fauns, trees, and wells

      Gods of this type naturally make little figure in literature though Proserpina, in consequence of her identification with the Greek Persephone, achieved a great place and is indeed the subject of the last great poem written under the Roman Empire. But there were other gods of countryside and woodland, whom we know better in art and poetry. "Faunus lover of fugitive Nymphs" is charming enough in Horace's ode, and Fauns, Pans and Satyrs lend themselves readily to grotesque treatment in statue and gem and picture. But the country people took them seriously. Lucretius, speaking of echoes among the hills, says: – "These spots the people round about fancy that goat-footed Satyrs and nymphs inhabit; they say that they are the Fauns, whose noise and sportive play breaks the still silence of the night as they move from place to place… They tell us that the country people far and wide full oft hear Pan, when, nodding the pine-cap on his half-bestial head, he runs over the gaping reeds with curved lip… And of other like monsters and marvels they tell us, that they may not be thought to inhabit lonely places, abandoned even by the gods."[32] Cicero makes his Stoic say their voices are often to be heard.[33] Pliny, in his Natural History, says that certain dogs can actually see Fauns; he quotes a prescription, concocted of a dragon's tongue, eyes and gall, which the Magi recommend for those who are "harassed by gods of the night and by Fauns";[34] for they did not confine themselves to running after nymphs, but would chase human women in the dark.

      Plutarch has a story of King Numa drugging a spring from which "two dæmons, Picus and Faunus," drank – "creatures who must be compared to Satyrs or Pans in some respects and in others to the Idæan Dactyli," beings of great miraculous power.[35] A countryside haunted by inhabitants of more or less than human nature, part beasts and part fairies or devils, is one thing to an unbeliever who is interested in art or folk-lore, but quite another thing to the uneducated man or woman who has heard their mysterious voices in the night solitude and has suffered in crop, or house, or herd from their ill-will.[36] What the Greek called "Panic" fears were attributed in Italy to Fauns.[37]

      "Trees," says Pliny, "were temples of divinities, and in the old way the simple country folk to this day dedicate any remarkable tree to a god. Nor have we more worship for images glittering with gold and ivory than for groves and the very silence that is in them."[38] The country people hung rags and other offerings on holy trees – the hedge round the sacred grove at Aricia is specially mentioned by Ovid as thus honoured.[39] The river-god of the Tiber had his sacred oak hung with spoils of fallen foes.[40]

      Holy wells too were common, which were honoured with models of the limbs their waters healed, and other curious gifts, thrown into them – as they are still in every part of the Old World. Horace's fount of Bandusia is the most famous of these in literature.[41] It was an old usage to throw garlands into springs and to crown wells on October 13th.[42] Streams and wells alike were haunted by mysterious powers, too often malevolent.[43]

      Ovid describes old charms to keep off vampires, striges, from the cradles of children.[44]

      In fact the whole of Nature teemed with beings whom we find it hard to name. They were not pleasant enough, and did not appeal enough to the fancy, to merit the name "fairies" – at least since The Midsummer Night's Dream was written. Perhaps they are nearer "The little People" – the nameless "thim ones."[45] They were neither gods nor demons in our sense of the words, though Greek thinkers used the old Homeric word daimôn to describe them or the diminutive of it, which allowed them to suppose that Socrates' daimónion was something of the kind.

      The genius

      But these Nature-spirits, whatever we may call them, were far from being the only superhuman beings that encompassed man. Every house had its Lares in a little shrine (lararium) on the hearth, little twin guardian gods with a dog at their feet, who watched over the family, and to whom something was given at every meal, and garlands on great days. Legend said that Servius Tullius was the son of the family Lar.[46] The Lares may have been spirits of ancestors. The Emperor Alexander Severus set images of Apollonius, Christ, Abraham and Orpheus, "and others of that sort" in his lararium.[47] Not only houses but streets and cross-roads had Lares; the city had a thousand, Ovid said, besides the genius of the Prince who gave them;[48] for Augustus restored two yearly festivals in their honour in Spring and Autumn. There were also the Penates in every home, whom it would perhaps be hard to distinguish very clearly from the Lares. Horace has a graceful ode to "Phidyle" on the sufficiency of the simplest sacrifices to these little gods of home and hearth.[49] The worship of these family gods was almost the only part of Roman religion that was not flooded and obscured by the inrush of Oriental cults.

      "The Ancients," said Servius, "used the name Genius for the natural god of each individual place or thing or man,"[50] and another antiquary thought that the genius and the Lar might be the same thing. For some reason men of letters laid hold upon the genius, and we find it everywhere. Why there should be such difference even between twin brothers,

      He only knows whose influence at our birth

      O'errules each mortal's planet upon earth,

      The attendant genius, temper-moulding pow'r,

      That stamps the colour of man's natal hour.[51]

      The idea of this spiritual counterpart pervades the ancient world. It appears in Persia as the fravashi.[52] It is in the Syrian Gnostic's Hymn of the Soul, as a robe in the form and likeness of a man. —

      It was myself that I saw before me as in a mirror;

      Two in number we stood, but only one in appearance.[53]

      It is also probable that the "Angel" of Peter and the "Angels of the little children" in the New Testament represent the same idea. The reader of Horace hardly needs to be reminded of the birthday feast in honour of the genius, —indulge genio. December, as the month of Larentalia and Saturnalia, is the month welcome to every genius, Ovid says.[54]

      The worship of all or most of these spirits of the country and of the home was joyful, an affair of meat and drink. The primitive sacrifice brought man and god near one another in the blood and flesh of the victim, which was of one race with them both.[55] It was on some such ground that the Jews would not "eat with blood," lest the soul of the beast should pass

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