Other gods protected a city, a certain section of a mountain, a
forest; every river, every fountain, every tree had its little local
divinity. It is this that makes an old woman in a Latin romance
exclaim, "Our country is so full of gods that it is much easier to
find a god than a man."
=Form of the Gods.=--The Romans, unlike the Greeks, did not give their
gods a precise form. For a long time there was no idol in Rome; they
worshipped Jupiter under the form of a rock, Mars under that of a
sword. It was later that they imitated the wooden statues of the
Etruscans and the marbles of the Greeks. Perhaps they did not at first
conceive of the gods as having human forms.
Unlike the Greeks they did not imagine marriage and kinship among
their gods; they had no legends to tell of these relationships; they
knew of no Olympus where the gods met together. The Latin language had
a very significant word for designating the gods: they were called
Manifestations. They were the manifestations of a mysterious divine
power. This is why they were formless, without family relationship,
without legends.
Pages:
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291