self might be without moral significance: as we have seen, the
worshipper might be wholly ignorant of the character, even the name of
the deity he worshipped, and in any case the motive of his action was
naught, the act itself everything. Nor again had the Roman religion any
trace of that powerful incentive to morality, a doctrine of rewards and
punishments in a future life: the ideas as to the fate of the dead were
fluctuating and vague, and the Roman was in any case much more
interested in their influence on himself than in their possible
experiences after death.

The divorce then between religion and morality seems almost complete
and it is not strange that most modern writers speak of the Roman
religion as a tiresome ritual formalism, almost wholly lacking in
ethical value. And yet it did not present itself in this light to the
Romans themselves. Cicero, sceptic as he was, could speak of it as the
cause of Rome's greatness; Augustus, the practical politician, could
believe that its revival was an essential condition for the
renaissance of the Roman character. Have we, in our brief examination
of its characteristics, seen any features which may suggest the
solution of this apparent antagonism? Was there in this formalism a
life which escapes us, as we handle the dry bones of antiquarianism?

In the first place there may be a danger that we underrate the value
of formalism itself. It spells routine, but routine is not without
value in the strengthening of character. The private citizen, who
conscientiously day by day had carried out the worship of his household
gods and month by month observed the sacred abstinence from work on the
days of festival, was certainly not less fitted to take his place as a
member of a strenuous and well-organised community, or to serve
obediently and quietly in the army on campaign. Even the magistrate in
the execution of his religious duties must have acquired an exactness
and method, which would not be valueless in the conduct of public
business. And when we pass to the origin of this formalism--the legal
relation--the connection with the Roman character becomes at once more
obvious. The 'lawgivers of the world,' who developed constitution and
code to a systematised whole such as antiquity had not dreamed of
before, imported, we may say if we like, their legal notions into the
sphere of religion: but we must not forget the other side of the
question. The permanence and success of this g