foreign origin. The Greek oracles furnished the earliest occasion of its introduction. The language of the Roman gods was wholly confined to Yea and Nay or at the most to the making their will known by the method of casting lots, which appears in its origin Italian;[1] while, from very ancient times (although not apparently until the impulse was received from the East), the more talkative gods of the Greeks imparted actual utterances of prophecy. The Romans made efforts, even at an early period, to treasure up such counsels, and copies of the laws of the soothsaying priestess of Apollo, the Cumæan Sibyl, were accordingly a highly valued gift on the part of their Greek guest-friends from Campania. For the reading and interpretation of the fortune-telling book a special college, inferior in rank only to the augurs and pontifices, was instituted in early times, consisting of two men of lore (duoviri sacris faciundis), who were furnished at the expense of the state with two slaves acquainted with the Greek language. To these custodiers of oracles the people resorted in cases of doubt, when some act of worship was needed in order to avoid some impending evil and they did not know to which of the gods or with what rites it was to be performed. But Romans in search of advice early betook themselves also to the Delphic Apollo himself. Besides the legends relating to such an intercourse already mentioned (P. 149), it is attested partly by the reception of the word thesaurus so closely connected with the Delphic oracle, into all the Italian languages with which we are acquainted, and partly by the oldest Roman form of the name of Apollo, Aperta, the "opener," an etymological perversion of the Doric Apellon, the antiquity of which is betrayed by its very barbarism. The gods also of the mariner, Castor and Polydeukes or with the Romans Pollux, the god of traffic Hermes—the Roman Mercurius, and the god of healing, Asklapios or Æsculapius, were, from causes which naturally suggest themselves, early known to the Romans, although their public worship only began at a later period. The name of the festival of the "good goddess" (Bona Dea) damium, corresponding to the Greek δάμιον, or δήμιον, may likewise reach back as far as our present epoch. It is certain that in very early times the Italian tutelary
- ↑ Sors from serere, to place in a row. The sortes were probably small wooden tablets arranged upon a string, which when thrown formed figures of kinds; an arrangement which puts one in mind of the Runic characters.
