applied to the
deity and not to the victim; this naturally did not occur to Servius,
whose mind was occupied rather with Virgil and the literary use of the
word than with the original use and meaning of the language of prayer.
Undoubtedly he has made a mistake here, which Cato's piety has enabled
us to detect. It was, in fact, the deity whose strength was to be
increased by the offerings; so much at least seems to me to be beyond
doubt. There is, indeed, no certain trace in the ritual, or in Roman
literature, that the gods were supposed to consume the exta, or the
cakes and wine offered them; that primitive notion must have been
excluded from the _ius divinum_. But instead of it we find the more
spiritual idea that by placing on the altar the organs of the life of
the victim, with ancient forms of sacred cake and offerings of wine, the
vitality of the deity, his power to help his worshippers, to make the
corn grow and the cattle bring forth young, to aid the State against
enemies, or what not, was really increased in this semi-mystic way. Let
us remember that the Roman numina were powers constantly at work in
their own sphere; they are the various manifestations of the one Power
as conceived in immediate relation to man and his wants; they are
sometimes addressed in prayer, as we have seen, by additional titles
which suggest their strength and vitality: Virites Quirini, Nerio
Martis, Moles Martis, Maia or Maiestas Volcani. What, then, could be
more natural than that the Roman should call upon his divine
fellow-citizen to accept that which, according to ancient tradition and
practice, will keep up his strength, and at the same time increase his
glory and his goodwill towards his worshippers? This is, then, the idea
which I believe to have been at the root of Roman sacrificial ritual,
and it seems to confirm the dynamic theory of sacrifice recently
propounded by some French anthropologists, _i.e._ that a mystic current
of _religious force_ passed through the victim, from priest to deity,
and perhaps back again.[384] I believe that we have here a transitional
idea of the virtue of sacrifice--an idea that bridges over the gulf
between the crude notion that the gods actually partake of the offering,
and the later more spiritual view that the offering is an honorary gift
"to the glory of God." It seems also to be found in the Vedic religion.
Dr. Farnell writes: "In the Vedic ritual we find a pure and spiritual
form of prayer;