_certi_ because their names expressed their
supposed activity quite clearly.[324] We know for certain that Varro
found these names in the books of the pontifices, and that they were
there called Indigitamenta:[325] a word which has been variously
interpreted, and has been the subject of much learned disputation. I
believe with Wissowa that it means "forms of invocation," _i.e._ the
correct names by which gods should be addressed.

Thus these lists of names come down to us at third hand: Varro took them
from the pontifical books, and the Christian fathers took them from
Varro. It is obvious that this being the case they need very careful
critical examination; and till recently they were accepted in full
without hesitation, and without reflection on such questions as, _e.g._,
whether they are psychologically probable, or whether they can be
paralleled from the religious experience of other peoples. Some
preliminary critical attempts were made about fifty years ago in this
direction,[326] but the first thoroughgoing examination of the subject
was published by R. Peter in the article "Indigitamenta" in Roscher's
_Mythological Lexicon_. This most industrious scholar, though his
interpretation of the word Indigitamenta is probably erroneous,[327] was
the first to reach the definite conclusion that the lists are not really
primitive, and do not, as we have them, represent primitive religious
thought. It was after a very careful study of this article, which is
long enough to fill a small volume, that I wrote in my _Roman Festivals_
of the Indigitamenta as "based on"--not actually representing, I might
have added--"old ideas of divine agency, now systematised by something
like scientific terminology and ordered classification by skilled legal
theologians"; and as "an artificial priestly exaggeration of a primitive
tendency to see a world of nameless spirits surrounding and influencing
all human life."[328]

I was not then specially concerned with the Indigitamenta, and only
alluded to them in passing. But before my book was published there had
already appeared a most interesting work on the names of deities
(_Goetternamen_) by H. Usener, a brilliant investigator, which drew fresh
attention to the subject. Usener found in mediaeval records of the
religion of the heathen Lithuanians what seemed to be a remarkable
parallel with this old Roman theology, and he also compared these
records with certain facts in what we may call the p