on another occasion, Adolenda and
Coinquenda; these seem beyond doubt to refer to the process of getting
the obnoxious tree down from the roof, of breaking it up, and burning
it.

In both these examples, which have come down to us more directly than
the lists in the Fathers, Wissowa sees assistant or subordinate deities
(if such they can be called) grouped around a central idea, that of the
main object of sacrifice in each case;[334] these are the result of the
_cura_ and _caerimonia_ supervised and over-elaborated by pontifical law
and ritual. It is, I may add on my own account, most unlikely, and
psychologically almost impossible, that any individual farmer should
have troubled himself to remember and enumerate by name twelve deities
representing the various stages of an agricultural process; and Cato, in
fact, says nothing of such ritual. It was the flamen of the City-state,
who, when sacrificing to Tellus and Ceres before harvest,[335] pictured,
or recalled to mind, the various processes of a year of what we may call
high farming rather than primitive, under the names of deities plainly
invented out of the words which express those processes--words which
themselves are certainly not all antique. And in the second example,
which dates from the second century A.D., we see that the process of
destroying the intruding fig-tree is represented in ritual in exactly
the same curious way: the names of the deities, Deferunda and the rest,
being invented for the occasion out of the words which express the
several acts of the process of destruction. These Arval Brethren of the
second century inherited the traditions of their predecessors of an
earlier age, and carried out the work of amplification in their
invocations by pedantically imitating the pontifices of five or six
centuries earlier. They held, in a way which to us is ludicrous, to the
old notion that you should try and cover as much ground as possible in
worship, and to cover it in detail, so that no chance might be missed
of securing the object for which you were taking so much trouble.

Now to return to Varro and his lists of names. What is Dr. Wissowa's
conclusion about these, after examining the two examples of Sondergoetter
which have not come down to us through so much book-learning as the
rest?

Varro's _di certi_, he says[336]--and I think there is no doubt that he
is right--included the name of every deity, great or small, of which he
could feel sure that