But even more deeply rooted in the patriotic hearts of the people was the worship of Vesta. As Vulcan was usually the wild, untamed, de structive power of fire, so Vesta (vas, "burn," not vas, "to dwell") was the beneficent, civilizing force of fire—the fundamental principal of the home life. She is the goddess of purity, and purity was the essence of her cult ; and she, with Vulcan, the Lares and Penates, makes up the circle of the home gods whose altar was the hearth and to whom the family prayers were addressed.
In the case of some of their gods the Romans purposely concealed their names; in the case of all the greater gods the names are so mysterious that we can gain but little help from them: e. g., Janus and Jana, Jupiter and Juno are simply "the Bright, the Heavenly Ones ;" Faunas and Fauna (fay, "favor"), "the Good, the Kindly Ones." With such indefiniteness and imperson ality it is no wonder that the whole theology was so readily Hellenized. The god's nature was ex pressed only when he received an epithet or "by name:" Jupiter Tonans (the thunderer), Jupiter Victor, Jupiter Stator, Imperator, TriumPhator, Urbis Custos (guardian of the city), and three hundred more by which Jupiter is characterized rather than understood.
All these greater gods were at first personifica tions of the forces of nature. but later they became something more. While they continued to repre sent the physical world, they were also busied with regulating and directing human life; they became the defenders of law and justice, bringing pros perity or adversity, rewarding the good and pun ishing the bad. Jupiter was the god of the bright skies, Dicspitcr, "the Father of Lights," but he was also the upholder of equity. on whom the stability of the state depended. The Fatherhood of God was an omnipresent thought to the Ro mans as they prayed to Janus Pater, Jupiter, Liber Pater, Mars-piter, etc.
But, on the whole, the Roman gods were merely abstractions or functions, endowed with just enough personality to give them sex, but not enough to systematize them into a family or families; they were not quite personal gods, but rather divine entities (minima, "powers"). There %vas no limit to the number of such "functional deities." Every object, animate or inanimate, every idea, abstract or concrete, became endowed with a spirit of its own. The religion of Rome
was a pandaemonism, "a belief, not in one god, pervading all nature and identified with nature, but in millions of gods, a god for every object, every act." For they had a separate divinity not only for every object, but for every possible hu man action or condition or experience from the cradle to the grave.
(2) The Gods of Earth. The chief trait of the religion of Rome is this universal animism of nat urism. To the Roman mind each phenomenon of nature and of life, everything that exists, abstract or concrete, seemed pervaded by its special deity, its peculiar genius. In the heavens above him he saw a powerful but distant god and protector, Jupiter, the Father of Lights: in the unfolding of the flower, the opening of the day, the clearing of the sky, as in the beginning of any human en terprise, he saw the working of his god Janus. But these great gods of heaven were remote from the heart of mankind; the people felt in significant in their presence, and sought for humbler, more familiar deities, whom they found in unlimited numbers inhabiting the world imme diately about them.
Another striking characteristic of the Roman, in his religion as in everything else, was his prac tical, utilitarian trend. The "spirits" were every where about him ; but the divinities of mountain or ocean were of little concern to him, as com pared with the powers that might help or hinder his every act in life—the Genii, the Lares and Palates.
Intermediate between gods and men was the Genius, or Spirit, of each individual man, or object, or locality. This Genius was conceived as a product of deity, and at the same time the procreator of the man, now his spiritual counterpart, and again his guardian angel. The Genius is a divine, life-originating power, and is also,perhaps, the self-perpetuating principle of the family; in his very nature as the self-preserving and procreating principle, he belongs only to men; his symbol was originally the serpent, and he was guardian of the marriage-bed. Women had their !linos instead of the Genius. The Genius was, therefore. the man's own god, and to him sacri fice was offered. This made an easy step to the worship of the Genius of departed members of the family, which had its culmination in im perial times in the deification of the emperors.