As the bodies of the dead were laid away in the grave, that was their dwelling-place. And from this conception of the individual grave the notion of a common home for all was naturally developed—subterranean, dark, like the grave itself. The souls of the dead were divine; they were gods, and their dwelling-place was holy. inviolate, like any other temple. But as the tem ple was the dwelling-place of the god, while lie himself was omnipresent, so it was also with the grave and with the disembodied spirit, which dwelt, not with the body in the grave, but in the world below, moving at times also in the world above. It was universal belief that the life there was but a continuation of the life here. Accord ingly, rifts of food, drink, weapons, tools, cloth ing, toilet-articles, and in the older times slaves and wives, accompanied the departing souls. Gods also they must have. And they had them —gods in form and nature as indistinct as any of those above. The only male god is Orcus (Dis Pater is foreign, and his name is but a translation of the Greek Pluto, the god of hidden riches); he is the personification of the might of death and is king of the underworld; while Lara, Larunda, Mater Larum, "the Mother of the Lares," Terra Mater, "Mother Earth," are only the motherly attendants of the souls of the dead—all of them but so many different names for kindly :Mother Earth.
The well-being of the souls below depended upon the manner in which they and their gods were honored by their surviving kindred. Ac cordingly some worship was due those gods, but far more important were the divine honors paid to the Manes, the pure, the bright, the good, the disembodied souls themselves. Herein we find among the Romans an unmistakable evidence for ancestor worship. The departed soul was a god; hence the appellation Dii Manes, "the Bright Gods," and Dii Parentes, "Parental Gods." Their service consisted in sacrificial offerings, prayer, and in general, due meed of reverence from the surviving members of their own house hold ; if these were withheld, horrors of the night might in consequence visit the offender, sickness and death would be his portion. Another ex pression of their worship is found in the great festivals in honor of the Dii Inieri, "Nether Gods" —the Secular Games, the Ludi Terentini, Ludi Taurii, the Dies Parentales (an all-souls' feast, February 13-20 ; and this cult was also responsi ble for the institution of the gladiatorial exhibi tions. An awful feature of their cult was the ancient devotio, a vow to the powers of the un derworld which meant the death and total destruc tion of an enemy, public or private.
The counterpart of the Dii Manes, "the Bright Ones," were the souls which never reached the spirit-realm—souls of men whose bodies were not properly buried, of suicides, of murderers, and of the murdered. These remained on earth as ghosts and goblins, Larvae and Leniures, to haunt and torment the wicked and to be propitiated by the good.
Even the good spirits could come back to earth on the great feast days of the dead, when the gates of the lower world were opened for them, and necromancy might conjure them up at any time.
(4) Temples and Priests. At first the Roman religion had no image, no temple, and no or dained priest. The gods were spirits, approach able alike to their greatest and their humblest servants ; their sanctuaries were the sun-lit moun tain-tops, the devious streams, the broad forest, the familiar flame. Groves, above all, were sacred
places, wherein dwelt the spirit of the god and the spirits of deified ancestors; and there the worshiper came from sacrifice, for prayer and for holy meditation. The chief sanctuary of Jupiter even in Romulus' days, was the great oak tree that crowned the Capitoline. Many of the old trees and groves continued in veneration even into the period of the empire. But all this was of the intellect rather than of the heart. The Romans' gods demanded sacrifice, not love; they did not even feed the imagination as did the Greek gods.
As the Romans knew no images of their gods for one hundred and seventy years after the founding of Rome, so they had no temples. In stead. they had symbols—stones for Jupiter, staves and spears for Mars, etc., and sacred ani mals (survivals of former totemism). The Ro man, left to himself, had no desire to reduce his vague deity to a visible and tangible form. His god was not a man, but a rumen, "power." But his own notion was swept away by the swelling tide of Grecian influence, and one temple only, Vesta's, received no image, even when Greece was plundered to furnish statues for Roman sanc tuaries.
After King Numa the Roman religion was one, not of feeling, but of form. It was not emo tional, but legal ; it was not for the salvation of the individual, but for the establishment of the state. Its want of story, of art, and of feeling was compensated for by a superabundance of the most minute ritual—the observance of certain rites to be performed in a certain manner at cer tain times and in certain places. It was not a matter of faith or creed, but of punctilious per formance. The real nature of the Roman wor ship is suggested by the great number of religious festivals; there were more than twenty to Mars alone.
But the two principal expressions of worship were sacrifice and prayers, of thanksgiving and of expiation. In neither act of devotion was the mediation of a priest required. In Rome the role of the priest was very much curtailed; he was but a Roman citizen in an office to serve the state. But anyone's sacrifice or prayer would ascend to heaven if only it was offered in due form. Each individual was his own priest; the paterfamilias was priest for his household; the king—while kings lasted—was high-priest for his great household, the state. In republican times the consul offered prayer and sacrifice for his people; the priest might stand by, but the most he did was to suggest the forms to be employed. To represent the king, and under his direction, there were three Greater Flamines, "fire-fanners," and a Rex Sacrorum, "king" or "director of the sacri fices" (who once, no doubt, was the head of the whole state, political as well as religious), to su perintend the worship of the greater gods, while later, as new worships were introduced, twelve Lesser Flamens were added. But even before the beginning of the republic the Pantile% Max imus, the president of the College of Pontiffs, had become in place of the king a sort of cultus minister, or pope, the head of the whole religious system of Rome.