ut as that ritual is a
processional one, concerned with sacrifices at several spots, the two
chief parts of the rite, the slaughter and the _porrectio_, probably
followed closely on one another. We may perhaps guess that where these
two parts were separated by a considerable interval, as in the majority
of Roman festivals, the prayer was said by the priest also at the moment
of _porrectio_. The prayer is so important a detail as to need separate
handling--important because it helps us to interpret the ideas of the
Romans about their sacrifices, and the attitude in which they conceived
themselves as standing towards the deities whom they thus approached. I
propose to occupy the rest of this lecture in considering this most
interesting topic. I wish first to draw attention to a particular
feature, or rather expression, which occurs in the authentic wording of
certain prayers which we are lucky enough to possess, because I think it
throws some light on the meaning which the Romans attached to the
sacrifice it accompanied; and secondly, to consider the character of
Roman prayers generally, in view of a question now being largely
discussed, _i.e._ whether prayer is a development from spell or charm,
belonging in its origin to the region of magic.

We have various forms of prayer surviving in Roman literature: some of
them are versified by the poets, and therefore give us a general
impression of the contents without the actual and genuine wording; we
have also two fragments of ancient _carmina_ which have the form of
prayers, those of the Salii and the Fratres Arvales; and we have certain
forms used on special occasions, such as the _evocatio_ of the gods of a
hostile community, or the formulae of vows (_vota_) which I must
postpone to the next lecture. But the only unquestionably genuine old
Roman prayers used at sacrifice, taken from the books of the pontifices
and preserved word for word, are those which Cato embodied in his
treatise on agriculture in the second century B.C., as proper to be used
with sacrifice on certain occasions in the agricultural year.[380] It is
here that we meet with the phrase, familiar in another form to all Latin
scholars, on which I wish to lay stress now. It occurs in all the four
forms of prayer which Cato copied down. The first is at the time of the
flowering of the pear-trees, on behalf of the oxen: "Iuppiter dapalis,
quod tibi fieri oportet in domo familia mea culignam vini dapi eius
rei[38