and we have every reason to
believe that no such thing was known at Rome until the Etruscan temple
of the Capitoline trias was built near the end of the regal period.
Varro expressly declared that the Romans remained for more than 170
years without any images of their gods, and added that those who first
introduced such images "civitatibus suis et metum dempsisse et errorem
addidisse."[293] What he had in his mind is clear; he had indeed no
direct knowledge of those early times, but he is thinking of a definite
traditional date in the kingly period--the last year of the reign of
Tarquinius Priscus, who, according to Varro's own account, built the
temple on the Capitol and placed in it a statue of Jupiter.[294] That
was the oldest image of which he knew anything; and, as Wissowa has
remarked, his belief is entirely corroborated by the fact that in every
single case in which the image of a god has any part in his cult, it is
always either this Capitoline Jupiter or some deity of later
introduction and non-Roman origin. It is also borne out by another
significant and interesting fact--that the next image to be introduced,
that of Diana in the temple on the Aventine, was a copy of the [Greek:
xoanon] of Artemis at Massilia, itself a copy of the famous one at
Ephesus.[295] Let us note that these two earliest statues were placed in
roofed temples which were the dwelling-places of gods in an entirely new
sense; so far no Roman deity of the city had been so housed, because he
could not be thought of in terms of human life, as visible in human form
and needing shelter. But this later and foreign notion of divinity so
completely took possession of the minds of the Romans of the
cosmopolitan city that Varro is the only writer who has preserved the
tradition of the older way of thinking. In the religion of the family
Ovid indeed has charmingly expressed it, perhaps on the authority of
some lost passage of Varro[296]:--

ante focos olim scamnis considere longis
mos erat, et mensae credere adesse deos.

Tibullus in one passage has mentioned what seems to be some rude attempt
to give outward shape and form to an ancient pastoral deity[297]:--

lacte madens illic suberat Pan ilicis umbrae
et facta agresti lignea falce Pales.

And Propertius hints at a like representation of Vertumnus, the garden
deity. But without some corroborative evidence it is hardly safe to take
these as genuine examples of early iconic worship.