jectival
character of many of the names--Neptunus, Portunus, Quirinus, Saturnus,
Volcanus, Volturnus: these are not proper names, but clearly express
some character or function exercised by the power or _numen_ to whom the
name is given. Saturnus is the most familiar example; the word suggests
no personality, but rather a sphere of operations (whether we take the
name as referring to sowing or to seed maturing in the soil) in which a
certain _numen_ is helpful. Saturnus, Volcanus, Neptunus were indeed
identified later on with Greek gods of a ripe polytheistic system, and
have thus become quite familiar to us, far too familiar for a right
understanding of early Roman ideas. We might naturally expect that the
identification of Saturnus with Kronos, of Neptunus with Poseidon, would
give us some clue to the original Roman conception of the _numen_ thus
Graecised, but it is not so. Neptunus may have had some connection with
water, rain, or springs, but we have no real proof of it, and it is
impossible to say why Saturnus became Kronos.[224] The only certain
result that we can win from the study of these adjectival titles is that
they represent a transition between animism and polytheism, a transition
exactly expressed by the one word _numen_.

_Numen_ is so important a word in the Roman religion that it is
necessary to be perfectly clear as to what was meant by it. It must be
formed from _nuere_ as _flumen_ from _fluere_, with a sense of activity
inherent in the verb. As _flumen_ is that which actively flows, so
_numen_ is that which actively does whatever we understand by the word
_nuere_; and so far as we can determine, that was a manifestation of
will. _Adnuere_ is to consent, to give your good will to some act
proposed or completed, and is often so used of Jupiter in the _Aeneid_.
_Nuere_ should therefore express a simple exercise of will-power, and
_numen_ is the being exercising it. In time it came to be used for the
will of a god as distinct from himself, as in the fourth _Aeneid_
(269)--

ipse deum tibi me claro demittit Olympo
regnator, caelum ac terras qui numine torquet.

Or in the fourth _Eclogue_ (47)--

concordes stabili fatorum numine Parcae,

where Servius explains it as "potestate, divinatione, ac maiestate." But
beyond doubt this use is a product of the literary age, and the word
originally indicated the being himself who exercised the will--a sense
familiar to us in the opening lines of the _Ae