GENIUS (Lat. the begetter). In its earliest meaning in private cult, the genius of the Roman house-father and the iuno (see JUNG) of the house-mother were worshipped. These certainly were not the souls of the married pair, as is clear both from their names and from the fact that we never hear in any early docu ment of the genius or iuno of a dead person. As no cult was paid to the genius of any other member of the family, it seems reason able to suppose that they were the male and female forms of the family's, or clan's, power of continuing itself by reproduction which were in the keeping of the heads of the family or clan for the time being, and passed at death to their successors. (See Rose, Primitive Culture in Italy, 149 et seq.) In this as in all forms of his cult, the genius was often conceived as appearing in the form of a snake, although he is also shown in art as a young man, generally engaged in sacrificing. At every wedding a bed, the lectus genialis, was made for the genius and iuno of the hus band and wife, and its presence in the house was a sign of matri mony (Horace, Epp. i. 1, 87; Paulus, epit. Fest. 83, 23 Lindsay).
Owing to the rise of individualism and also to the prevalence of Greek ideas concerning a guardian spirit or daimon, the genius lost its original meaning, and came to be a sort of personification of the individual's natural desires and appetites. Hence the phrases indulgere genio, genium de f rudare, signifying respectively to lead a pleasurable and a stingy life. However, the development did not stop here. The genius came to be thought of as a sort of guardian angel, a higher self ; and, as the Greek daimon was sometimes rationalized into the individual's character or temper, so also Horace half-seriously (Epp. ii. 2, 187) says that only the genius knows what makes one person so different from another, adding that he is a god who is born and dies with each one of us. This individual genius was worshipped by each individual especially on his birthday. A few inscriptions even mention the genius of a dead person, as Christian epitaphs sometimes speak of his angel.
To show reverence for the genius of another, or to swear by it, was a mark of deep respect ; hence it is not unnatural that the genius of Augustus and of his suc cessors formed objects of popular cult. Thus to worship the genius Augusti avoided the feeling against worshipping any living emperor, which remained fairly strong in Italy (see L. R. Taylor in Trans. Amer. Philol. Assoc., vol. li., 116 et seq.) ; for of course all genii were divine and might properly be worshipped.
As Greek daimones were by no means always the guardian spirits of individuals, so also we get a vast variety of genii; i.e., guardian spirits, of places, genius loci, including buildings (genius balneorum, etc.) and corporations of all sorts, from the State (genius populi Romani) to small bodies of troops, guilds of tradesmen and so forth. A very curious de velopment is that we sometimes hear of the genius of a god, even of Jupiter, or of the iuno of a goddess.
English.—Apart from the Latin use of the term, the plural "genii" (with a singular "genie") is used in English, as equivalent to the Arabic jinn, for a class of spirits, good or bad, such as are described, for instance, in The Arabian Nights. But "genius" itself has become the regular English word for the high est conceivable form of original ability, something altogether extraordinary and beyond even supreme educational prowess, and differing, in kind apparently, from "talent," which is usually dis tinguished as marked intellectual capacity short only of the inex plicable and unique endowment to which the term "genius" is confined.
See further Wissowa, Religion u. Kultus, 2nd ed., p. 175 et seq., and the classical dictionaries; also J. F. Nisbet, Insanity of Genius (1891) ; F. Galton, Hereditary Genius (new ed., 1892) , and C. Lombroso, Man of Genius (Eng. trans., 1891).
