ee of
Greek ideas and mythology, and, in fact, to abstain from bringing the
ideas of any other peoples to bear upon the question until we are pretty
sure that we have some sort of understanding of those Roman ideas with
which we are tempted to compare them. The first duty of the student of
any system of religion is to study that religion in and by itself. As M.
S. Reinach observed in an address at the Congress for the History of
Religions at Oxford, it is time that we began to attend to differences
as well as similarities; and this can only be done by the conscientious
use of such materials as are available for the study of each particular
religion.

The only materials available in the case of the earliest Rome are (1)
the calendar which I was explaining in the last lecture, which gives us
the names of the festivals of the religious year; (2) the names of the
deities concerned in these festivals, so far as we know them from later
additions to the calendar, from Roman literature, and from evidence,
chiefly epigraphical, of the names of deities among kindred Italian
peoples; (3) the fragments of information, now most carefully collected
and sifted, about what the Romans did in the worship of their deities.
The names and order of the festivals, the names of the deities
themselves, the cult, or detail of worship, including priesthoods and
holy places,--these are the only real materials we possess, and our only
safe guides. To trust to legends is fatal, because such legends as there
were in Italy were never written down until the Greeks turned their
attention to them, colouring them with their own fancy and with
reminiscences of their own mythology. For example, no sane investigator
would now make use of the famous story told by Ovid and Plutarch about
Numa's interview with Jupiter, and the astute way in which he deceived
the god, as an illustration of the Roman's ideas of the divine; we know
that it can be traced back to the greatest liar among all Roman
annalists,[219] that it was in part derived from a Greek story, and in
part invented to explain a certain piece of ritual, the _procuratio
fulminis_. Even what was done in the cult must be handled with knowledge
and discretion. Dr. Frazer has a theory that the Roman kings personated
Jupiter, and uses as evidence of this the fact that in the triumph the
triumphator was dressed after the fashion of the statue of the god in
the Capitoline temple, with his face reddened with _m