Like the Greeks, the early Romans had no "mediators," but addressed their prayers' and supplications directly to the individual god. The priesthood, we find, in the cal period, had arisen originally from the " kindlers (fiamines) of Mars," or those who presented burnt-offerings to the early Italian war-god Mars, and the twelve dancers (m/ii; who in March performed war-dances in his honor. To these came the "Field Brethren," the "Wolf-repellers," etc.; and thus by degrees an endless and most powerful bier grehy came to be built up. By the side of it, but not identical with it, were certain sacred colleges, who kept the sacred traditions alive, and who were the supreme author ity on religious observances. These were the colleges of Pontifices (q.v,) or Bridge=' builders, of Augurs (sec AUGURIES and AtsrrcEs), dre keepers of the Sibylline books (see Slum); the twenty Fetiales or state heralds, the supreme—advising, not executing —authorities on international law; the Vestal virgins, on whom devolved the guardian ship of the Palladium and of the sacred fire; the Salii (see above), and others. Priests, in the stricter sense of the word, in the service of special deities, were the Flamens (q.v.); while the Den Dis, the goddess of fields (Tellus, Ceres, Ops, Flora), had the special' brotherhood of the twelve Arvalian brothers, with their numerous followers. The state sacrifice, before the expulsion of the mythical kings supposed to have been offered up by these, was offered by a special rex sacrorum or rex tacrijiculus. .
The mode of worship was analogous to that of the Greeks. Votive offerings, prayers, vows, sacrifices, libations, purifications, banquets, lays, songs, dances, and games made up the sum of their divine service. The sacred places were either fana, hallowed spots on hills and in groves—or templa, (Ides, special buildings dedicated to•a• special deity. The latter contained ;wo altars—the ara, Tor libations and oblations; and the altare, for burnt offerings chiefly. Frugality, as it pervaded, in the classical period, the domestic life, so it also prevented all extravagance of offerings to the c'eity, and all excess of rejoicing before it. Sober and dull, as the Roman religion undoubtedly was- for it never once expanded into the joyful extravagances of fancy with which the Greek religion was fraught throughout—it at the same time kept free from the abominations that are the natural offspring of that unbounded sway of fancy. Human sacrifices, as far as they are to be met with, grew out of the idea of substitution, and were chiefly enthusiastic voluntary acts of men who threw themselves into the breach; or they carried out decrees of civil tribunals, who had convicted the "victim" of a deadly offense. In their dealings with the gods, the Romans were pure merchants, carrying out their promises with strict literalness. and thus often fraudulently, against the patent inner meaning of their promise; but the gods were not to them the all-pervading essences, but rather creditors, strict and powerful, yet unable to exact more than was agreed upon outwardly.
. A code of moral and ethical rules, furthering and preserving civil order, and the pious relations within the state and family, were the palpable results of this religion, which, in its barrenness of metaphysical notions, did next to nothing for the-furtherance of art.
And here we must enter somewhat more fully into that peculiar phenomenon of the utter dissimilarity in the characters of the Greek and Roman religion, at which we have hinted already—a dissimilarity all the more surprising. as the self-same symbolical and allegorical views of nature, filtered through however different channels, form the tion of both. Both also—especially in their later stages—offer a general analogy not only of deities and spirits. but even of holy places and their mode of worship. But the fact is that they each took the originally common stock of notions and conceptions, clad more or less in mythical garb, and utterly transformed it, superadding to it from time to time according to their own distinct nationality. It is here, however. that their •characteristic traits come out in as forcible a contrast as they do in every other relation of life, in their art and culture, in their states and families. While to the Hid!cues the individual was the chief end of all things, and the state existed for the citizen, and the ideal was the Kalokagathia, the beautiful, good, the Romans imposed, as the highest duty, submission to authority—the son to the father, the citizen to the ruler, and all to the gods. To them, only that which was useful appeared good. Idleness was not to be tolerated in a community where every single member only existed as far as it contributcd to the greatness and aggrandizement of the commonwealth. Hence, with them. a rational thoughtfulness, and a grand and awful austerity in their relations to men and the Greeks treated both with joyful serenity. The Greek invested his gods with human attributes, and then surrounded them with a halo of highest splendor and most glorious divine beauty; but he constantly modeled and remodeled them, until they reached the acme of beautiful perfection, as would the painter and the sculptor with their work. The Roman, on the other hand, cared nothing for the outward form of his idealized notions—the notions themselves, mere ftmdamermtal ideas, were his sole object of veneration. The Greeks made everything concrete, corporeal, and individual; the Romans, abstract and general. The Greeks could only worship allegories; the Romans, abstractions. Hence, also, their utter discarding of many of the myths com mon to the whole Indo Germanic stock, the unmarried and childless state of their gods, who, moreover, wanted no food, and did not wander about among men, as did the Indian and the Hellenic. As in the late Midrash, which has partly found its way into Christianity, there is a heavenly Jerusalem right over the earthly Jerusalem, in which all timings below were reproduced in an exact ut most ideal and divine manner. Thus, the Roman pantheon was the precise counterpart of the Roman world as it existed in reality. Every man, and thing, and event, and act had a corresponding totchuy diety, that came and went with the special individual, phenomenon, or event; and eternal gods were those only that represented certain great unchanging laws of nature. The angels of the legendary lore of later Judaism and early Christianity, that protect special nations, were with the Romans the gods of these nations, and entered, as their special numina, the divine commonwealth of the Romans simultaneously with the admission of these nations into their own pale or freedom.