t mistaken, the idea of participation by the people in solemn
sacred rites was discouraged by the Roman priesthood; in the _ius
divinum_ the line drawn between _sacrum_ and _profanum_ was clear;
scenes of gluttony or revelry, like the Greek hecatombs, were eliminated
from the _sacra publica_, as I have already pointed out. Not till the
advent of the Sibylline books and the _Graecus ritus_ did the people
take an active part in the State religion; their duty was merely to
abstain from disturbance during the performance of sacred rites. "Feriis
iurgia amovento" is the only reference in Cicero's imaginary sketch of
the _ius divinum_ to the conduct of the citizen on festival days.[352]
Within the family, the curia, the gens, there might be direct and active
participation in daily or yearly ceremonies, but it was an essential
principle of the life of the city-state that its business, religious as
well as civil, should be carried out for the citizens by officials
specially appointed.

In the typical and organised worship of the State, _i.e._ sacrifice
honorific and piacular, sanctioned by the _ius divinum_, the utmost care
was taken that the whole procedure should be in every sense acceptable
to the deity; that nothing _profanum_ should cross the threshold of the
divine; hence it was quiet, orderly, dignified. The feeling that
communication with the deity invoked was impossible save under such
conditions was very strong in the Roman mind, stronger perhaps than with
any other people whose religious practice is known to us; and the sense
of obligation and duty, _pietas_, as they called it, was thus very early
developed, and of infinite value to the State in its youth. This is
entirely in keeping with what we have learnt in the last two lectures of
the ideas of the Romans about the nature of their deities, and throws
additional light on those ideas. They did not as yet know too much about
the divine beings and their powers and wishes; familiarity had not yet
bred contempt; _religio_, as we saw, was still strong among them--the
feeling of awe that is likely to diminish or disappear when you have
your god before you in the form of an idol. It is a principle of human
nature that where knowledge is imperfect, care must be taken to be on
the safe side; this is true of all practical undertakings, and as the
religion of the Romans was that of a practical people with a practical
end in view, it was particularly true of them.

First then