hole household met in the day cannot fail to have had its effect on
the domestic life, and, even if it was no direct incentive to morality,
it yet bound the family together in a sense of dependence on a higher
power for the supply of their daily needs.

We observed incidentally how the small events of domestic life were
given their religious significance, particularly in connection with the
worship of Lar and Genius, but to complete the sketch of domestic
religion, we must examine a little more closely its relation to the
process of life, and especially to the two important occasions of birth
and marriage. In no department of life is the specialisation of
function among the _numina_ more conspicuous than in connection with
birth and childhood. Apart from the general protection of Iuno Lucina,
the prominent divinity of childbirth, we can count in the records that
have come down to us some twenty subordinate spirits, who from the
moment of conception to the moment of birth watched, each in its own
particular sphere, over the mother and the unborn child. As soon as the
birth had taken place began a series of ceremonies, which are of
particular interest, as they seem to belong to a very early stage of
religious thought, and have a markedly rustic character. Immediately a
sacred meal was offered to the two field-deities, Picumnus and
Pilumnus, and then the Roman turned his attention to the practical
danger of fever for the mother and child. At night three men gathered
round the threshold, one armed with an axe, another with a stake, and a
third with a broom: the two first struck the threshold with their
implements, the third swept out the floor. Over this ceremony were said
to preside three _numina_, Intercidona (connected with the axe),
Pilumnus (connected with the stake, _pilum_), and Deverra (connected
with the act of sweeping). Its object was, as Varro explains it, to
avert the entrance of the half-wild Silvanus by giving three
unmistakeable signs of human civilisation; we shall probably not be
wrong in seeing in it rather an actual hacking, beating, and sweeping
away of evil spirits. On the ninth day after birth, in the case of a
boy, on the eighth in the case of a girl, occurred the festival of the
naming (_solemnitas nominalium_). The ceremony was one of purification
(_dies lustricus_ is its alternative title), and a piacular offering
was made to preserve the child from evil influences in the future.
Friends brought p