In passing to the religion of the state we are clearly entering on a later period and a more developed form of society. The loose aggregation of agricultural households gives place to the organized community with new needs and new ideals, and at the same time in religious thought the State religion. old vague notion of the numen is almost universally superseded by the more definite conception of the deus—not even now quite anthropomorphic, but with a much more clearly realized personality. We find then two prominent notes of the state influence, firstly, the adaptation of the old ideas of the household and agricultural cults to the broader needs of the community, especially to the new necessities of internal justice between citizens and war against external enemies, and secondly the organization of more or less casual worship into something like a consistent system. Adaptation proceeds at first naturally enough on the lines of analogy. As Janus is in the household the numen of the door, so in the state he is the god associated with the great gate near the corner of the forum: the Penates have their analogy in the Di Penates populi Romani Quiritium by whom the magistrates take their oath on entering office, the Lar familiaris in the Lares Praestites of the community, and the Genius in the new notion of the Genius populi Romani or Genius urbis Romae. But the closest and most curious analogy is seen in the case of Vesta. The Vesta of the state is in fact the king's hearth, standing in close proximity to the Regia, the king's palace; the Vestal Virgins, who have charge of the sacred fire, are the “king's daughters,” and as such even in republican times were in the manus of the pontifex maximus, who was the successor of the king on the legal side of his religious duties, as the rex sacrorum was on the sacrificial side. But adaptation meant also reflection and the widening of old conceptions under the influence of thought and even of abstract ideas. Thus, the simple reflection that the door is used for the double purpose of entrance and exit leads to the notion of the Janus of the state as bifrons (“two-faced”): the thought of the door as the first part of the house to which one comes, produces the more abstract idea of Janus as the “god of beginning,” in which character he has special charge of the first beginnings of human life (Consevius), the first hour of the day, the Calends of the month and the first month of the year in the later calendar: for the same reason his name takes the first place in the indigitamenta. But development proceeds also on broader and more important lines. Jupiter in the rustic-cult was a sky-god concerned mainly with the wine festivals and associated with the sacred oak on the Capitol. Now he develops a twofold character: as the receiver of the spolia opima he becomes associated with war, especially in the double character of the stayer of rout (Stator) and the giver of victory (Victor), in which last capacity he later gives birth to an offshoot in the abstract conception of the goddess Victoria. As the sky-god again he is appealed to as the witness of oaths in the special capacity of the Dius Fidius, producing once more an abstract offshoot in the goddess Fides. In these two conceptions, justice and war, lie the germs of the later idea of Jupiter as the embodiment of the life of the Roman people both in their internal organization and in their external relations. In much the same manner Mars takes on in addition to his agricultural character the functions of war-god, which in time completely superseded the earlier idea. Finally, we must notice, as the sign of the synoecismus of the two settlements, the inclusion of the Colline deity, Quirinus, apparently the Mars of the originally rival community. In these three deities, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, we have the great triad of the earliest stage of the state religion.
Organization showed itself in the fixing of the annual calendar and the development of the character and functions of the priesthood, and as we should expect, in a new conception of the legal relation of the gods to the state. In the earlier stage—whose notions of course still persist alongside of the state religion—each household has its own relations to its numina: now the state approaches the gods through its duly appointed representatives, the magistrates and priests. Their presence is typical of that of the whole people, and the private citizen is required to do no more on festival days than a ceremonial abstinence from work. It is obvious that the state religion has a less direct connexion with morality and the religious sense than the worship of the household, but it has its ethical value in a sense of discipline and a consecration of the spirit of patriotism.
The later stages represent not the spontaneous development of the genuine Roman religion, but its alteration and supersession by new cults and ideas introduced from foreign sources. Authorities are generally agreed in recognizing three periods:—(1) from the end of the Regal External influences. epoch to the second Punic War, when Rome was influenced by other peoples in Italy, with whom she was brought into contact by commerce or war; (2) from the second Punic War to the end of the Republic, when contact with Greek and oriental sources and the growth of literature revolutionized religious notions and led to a philosophic scepticism; (3) the Imperial epoch, opening with a revival of old religious notions and later marked by the official worship of the deified emperors and the wide influence of oriental cults.
(1) By the end of the regal period Rome had ceased to be a mere agricultural community and had developed into a city-state. There had consequently grown up within the state a large artisan class, excluded from the old patrician gentes and therefore from the state cult: at the same time the beginnings of commerce had opened relations with neighbouring peoples. The consequence was the introduction of certain new deities, the di novensides, from external sources, and the birth of new conceptions of the gods and their worship. We may distinguish three main influences, to a certain extent historically successive. (a) Tradition always assigned to the last three kings of Rome a connexion with the mysterious people of Etruria, and their influence at this period though not very Etruria. definite was certainly extensive. To them, possibly through the mediation of Falerii, a Latin town on the Etruscan border, was due the introduction of Minerva, who, as the goddess of handicraft and protectress of the artisan gilds, was established in a temple on the Aventine. Soon, however, she found her way on to the Capitol, and there a new Etruscan triad, Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, possibly going back from Etruria to Greece, was enshrined in a magnificent new temple built by Etruscan workmen and decorated in the Etruscan manner. In this temple the deities were represented by images, and on its dedication day, September 13th, at the novel festival of the opulum Jovis, the images were adorned and set out as partakers of the feast, a proceeding wholly foreign to the native Roman religion (see further Etruria, § Religion). (b) Secondly, in war and peace Rome formed relations with her neighbours of Latium, and, as a sign of the Latin league which resulted, the cult of Diana was brought from Aricia and established on the Aventine in the “commune Latinorum Dianae templum” (Varro, Ling. Lat. v. 43): about the same time was built the temple of Jupiter Latiaris on the Alban mount, its resemblance in style to the new Capitoline temple pointing to Rome's hegemony. So great was Rome's sense of kinship to the Latins that in two cases Latin cults were introduced inside the pomoerium: the worship of Hercules, which came from Tibur in connexion with commerce, was established at the ara maxima in the forum boarium, and the Tusculan cult of Castor as the patron of cavalry found a home close to the forum Romanum: it is a strange irony that both these deities should in reality have been in their origin Greek. Other Italian cults introduced at this period were those of Juno Sospes and Juno Regina, Venus and Fortuna Primigenia, a goddess of childbirth who came from Praeneste. (c) Later on in the same period contact with the cities of Magna Graecia brought about the wide-reaching introduction of the Sibylline books. Whatever may be their origin—and they came from Cumae—they Magna Graecia. were placed in the Capitoline temple under the care of a special commission of two (duoviri sacris faciundis, later decemviri and quindecimviri), and their “oracles,” which were referred to in times of great national stress, recommended the introduction of foreign cults. In 43 B.C., at a time of serious famine, they ordered the building of a temple to the Greek triad Demeter, Dionysus and Persephone, who were identified with the old Roman divinities. Ceres, Liber and Libera: Apollo must have come with or before the books themselves, though his temple was not built till 433 B.C.: Mercury followed, the representative of Ἑρμῆς Ἐμπολαῖος, Asclepius was brought from Epidaurus to the Tiber island in 293 B.C., and Dis and Proserpina, with their strange chthonic associations and night ritual, probably from Tarentum in 249 B.C. With new deities came new modes of worship: the graecus ritus, in which, contrary to Roman usage, the worshipper's head was unveiled, and the lectisternium (q.v.), an elaborate form of the “banquet of the gods.” In this period, then, we find first a legitimate extension of cults corresponding to the needs of the growing community, and secondly a religious restlessness and a consequent tendency to more dramatic forms of worship.
