or particular handicrafts, and no political interests
except the simple patriarchal government which sufficed for her present
needs. Her gods of water were the gods of rivers and springs; Neptune
was there, but he was not the ocean-god like the Greek Poseidon. Vulcan,
the god of fire, who was afterwards associated with the Greek Hephaistos
and became the patron of metal-working, was at this time merely the god
of destructive and not of constructive fire. Even the great god Juppiter
who was destined to become almost identical with the name and fame of
Rome was not yet a god of the state and politics, but merely the
sky-god, especially the lightning god, Juppiter Feretrius, the
"striker," who had a little shrine on the Capitoline where later the
great Capitoline temple of Juppiter Optimus Maximus was to stand.
Another curious characteristic of this early age, which, I think, has
never been commented on, is the extraordinarily limited number of
goddesses. Vesta is the only one who seems to stand by herself without a
male parallel. Each of the others is merely the contrasted potentiality
in a pair of which the male is much more famous, and the only ones in
these pairs who ever obtained a pronounced individuality did so because
their cult was afterwards reinforced by being associated with some
extra-Roman cult. The best illustration of this last is Juno. We may go
further and say that it-seems highly probable that the worship of female
deities was in the main confined to the women of the community, while
the men worshipped the gods. This distinction extended even to the
priesthoods where the wife of the priest of a god was the priestess of
the corresponding goddess. Such a state of affairs is doubly interesting
in view of the pre-eminence of female deities in the early Greek world,
which has been so strikingly shown by Miss Jane Harrison in her recent
book, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_.

The most vital question which can be put to almost any religion is that
in regard to its expansive power and its adaptability to new conditions.
Society is bound to undergo changes, and a young social organism, if
normal, is continually growing new cells. New conditions are arising and
new interests are coming to the front. In addition, if the growth is to
be continuous, new material is being constantly absorbed, and the simple
homogeneous character of the old society is being entirely changed by
the influx of foreign elements