ROMAN RELIGION (ro'man The Romans distinguished their own divinities as Gods of Heaven, Gods of Earth, and Gods of the Underworld, and in that order let us consider them.
(1) The Gods of Heaven. The Romans, like all their kindred races, inherited from their Indo Germanic forefathers the germs out of which their own religion grew ; nature-worship, ances tor-worship, animism, totemism—all were there, developed in Italy's peculiar way and involved in Romc's minute legal ritualism. While the Greek religion, in accordance with the character of the people, developed in the direction of beauty, poetry, art, humanity, the Roman religion, in ac cordance with the character of that people, de veloped in the direction of the practical and formal, of law and politics. The old Roman was wholly lacking in poetry and imagination; he was too serious, too devoted to "business:" and so, while we have a distinctively Roman religion, we have no Roman theogony, cosmog ony, or mythology, until these were imported from Greece.
The Romans had originally no system of (twelve) Great Gods; and when we find such a system formulated, it is due to Greek influence. The first mention of Twelve Great Gods in Italy was contained in the Sybilline Books; and even in Greece such a grouping is comparatively late, for it is not known in Homer. From the prece dence of the different priests in Rome we discover that the greatest deities were, in the order of rank, Janus, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, Vesta; and so the general form for prayers begins with Janus and ends with Vesta. According to that, the highest god of Rome was originally not Jupiter, but Janus. This old Sun-god, as his name (de rived, like Dyaus, Zeus and Jupiter, from div, "to shine") implies, was originally the Bright One; he was the "Oldest god," the "Beginning of All Things," the "Creator." In the form of prayers he is named before Jupiter, the father of Lights, the Bright Sky. But these two were in nature and being so closely akin that the one must in time yield to the other ; and so when Janus became supplanted in part by his great rival, Jupiter, as the protector of united Rome, he passed into story as the first king of Italy, the beginning of Italian history and tradi tion, while Jupiter, as Optimus Maximus, "the Highest and Best," continued as the center of the Roman state religion.
The female counterpart of Janus was Jana (identical with Diana, likewise from div, "to shine"), the great light of the night. Janus and Jana, Jupiter and Juno, Saturnus and Ops, Mars and Vesta, Faunus and Vedius—thesc were the original greater gods of the Romans. After the union with the Sabines, there were added the gods of the Sabincs: Quirinus, Sancus, Sol, Lima, ''faro, Minerva (who was only the "function" of thinking), and a host of abstractions like For tuna, "Fortune," Patna, "Fame," Fides, "Faith," etc. From the time of Tarquin on, the three gods of the Capitoline were grouped into a great trin ity. Jupiter Optimus Afaximus,./uno and Minerva, corresponding to the Homeric Trinity (Zeus. Apollo and Athena).
Gods unmodifiedly Roman in almost every fea ture, and suggestive of the simple old agricul tural life, were Mars and Vesta. Mars (»tar, "shine, be bright"), the god of the spring-time, to whom March and April were sacred, a sun-god like the Greek Apollo, whose influence was now blissful, now baleful, was a great tribal god of primeval Italy, patron of agriculture, herding, colonization, war, and with the Capitoline trin ity, the real national god of Rome. The Latin Mars, with his cult upon the Palatine, was iden tical with the Sabine Quirinus, whose. temple adorned the Quirinal; but when Quirinus became identified with Romulus, he sank into the rank of a demigod subordinate to Mars; and when the Hellenizing came, Mors was identified with Ares, Quirinus with Enyalius.
His female counterpart was Venus, "the Lovely." the goddess of the spring-time, of the gardens, of the starting buds and flowers, and the promise of fruits and increase; her later development into the goddess of feminine charms, of love and pleasure, and her identification with Aphrodite, were quite natural.