gods, according to the teaching
of Roman theology, the copy of an object was given and received
instead of the object itself. They presented to the lord of the sky
heads of onions and poppies, that he might launch his lightnings at
these rather than at the heads of men. In payment of the offering
annually demanded by father Tiber, thirty puppets plaited of rushes
were annually thrown into the stream.(12) The ideas of divine mercy
and placability were in these instances inseparably mixed up with
a pious cunning, which tried to delude and to pacify so formidable
a master by means of a sham satisfaction. The Roman fear of the
gods accordingly exercised powerful influence over the minds of the
multitude; but it was by no means that sense of awe in the presence
of an all-controlling nature or of an almighty God, that lies at the
foundation of the views of pantheism and monotheism respectively;
on the contrary, it was of a very earthly character, and scarcely
different in any material respect from the trembling with which the
Roman debtor approached his just, but very strict and very powerful
creditor. It is plain that such a religion was fitted rather to
stifle than to foster artistic and speculative views. When the
Greek had clothed the simple thoughts of primitive times with human
flesh and blood, the ideas of the gods so formed not only became
the elements of plastic and poetic art, but acquired also that
universality and elasticity which are the profoundest characteristics
of human nature and for this very reason are essential to all
religions that aspire to rule the world. Through such means the
simple view of nature became expanded into the conception of a
cosmogony, the homely moral notion became enlarged into a principle
of universal humanity; and for a long period the Greek religion
was enabled to embrace within it the physical and metaphysical
views--the whole ideal development of the nation--and to expand
in depth and breadth with the increase of its contents, until
imagination and speculation rent asunder the vessel which had
nursed them. But in Latium the embodiment of the conceptions of
deity continued so wholly transparent that it afforded no opportunity
for the training either of artist or poet, and the Latin religion
always held a distant and even hostile attitude towards art As the
god was not and could not be aught else than the spiritualizattion
of an earthly phenomenon, this same earthly counterp