The Roman pantheon contained three classes of gods and goddesses. First, the old Italian divinities, Etruscan, Latin, and Sabine, naturalized and adopted by the state. Secondly, the pale abstractions of the understanding, invented by the College of Pontiffs for moral and political purposes. And thirdly, the gods of Greece, imported, with a change of name, by the literary admirers and imitators of Hellas.
The genuine deities of the Roman religion were all of the first order. Some of them, like Janus, Vertumnus, Faunus, Vesta, retained their original character; others were deliberately confounded with some Greek deity. Thus Venus, an old Latin or Sabine goddess to whom Titus Tatius erected a temple as Venus Cloacina, and Servius Tullius another as Venus Libertina,[281] was afterward transformed into the Greek Aphroditê, goddess of love. If it be true, as is asserted by Nævius and Plautus, that she was the goddess of gardens, as Venus Hortensis and Venus Fruti, then she may have been originally the female Vertumnus. So Diana was originally Diva Jana, and was simply the female Janus, until she was transformed into the Greek Artemis.
The second class of Roman divinities were those manufactured by the pontiffs for utilitarian purposes,—almost the only instance in the history of religion of such a deliberate piece of god-making. The purpose of the pontiffs was excellent; but the result, naturally, was small. The worship of such abstractions as Hope (Spes), Fear (Pallor), Concord (Concordia), Courage (Virtus), Justice (Æquitas), Clemency (Clementia), could have little influence, since it must have been apparent to the worshipper himself that these were not real beings, but only his own conceptions, thrown heavenward.
The third class of deities were those adopted from Greece. New deities, like Apollo, were imported, and the old ones Hellenized. The Romans had no statues of their gods in early times; this custom they learned from Greece. "A full river of influence," says Cicero, "and not a little brook, has flowed into Rome out of Greece[282]." They sent to Delphi to inquire of the Greek oracle. In a few decades, says Hartung, the Roman religion was wholly transformed by this Greek influence; and that happened while the senate and priests were taking the utmost care that not an iota of the old ceremonies should be altered. Meantime the object was to identify the objects of worship in other countries with those worshipped at home. This was done in an arbitrary and superficial way, and caused great confusion in the mythologies[283]. Accidental resemblances, slight coincidences of names, were sufficient for the identification of two gods. As long as the service of the temple was unaltered, the priests troubled themselves very little about such changes. In this way, the twelve gods of Olympus—Zeus, Poseidôn, Apollo, Arês, Hêphæstos, Hermes, Hêrê, Athênê, Artemis, Aphroditê, Hestia, and Dêmêtêr—were naturalized or identified as Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, Mars, Vulcan, Mercury, Juno, Minerva, Diana, Venus, Vesta, and Ceres, Dionysos became Liber or Bacchus; Persephonê, Proserpina; and the Muses were accepted as the Greeks had imagined them.
To find the true Roman worship, therefore, we must divest their deities of these Greek habiliments, and go back to their original Etruscan or Latin characters.
Among the Etruscans we find one doctrine unknown to the Greeks and not adopted by the Romans; that, namely, of the higher "veiled deities,"[284] superior to Jupiter. They also had a dodecad of six male and six female deities, the Consentes and Complices, making a council of gods, whom Jupiter consulted in important cases. Vertumnus was an Etruscan; so, according to Ottfried Müller, was the Genius. So are the Lares, or household protectors, and Charun, or Charon, a power of the under-world. The minute system of worship was derived by Rome from Etruria. The whole system of omens, especially by lightning, came from the same source.
After Janus, and three Capitoline gods (Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva), above mentioned, the Romans worshipped a series of deities who may be classed as follows:—
I. Gods representing the powers of nature:—
1. SOL, the Sun. A Sabine deity. In later times the poets attributed to him all the characters of Helios; but as a Roman god, he never emerged into his own daylight.
2. LUNA, the Moon. Also regarded as of Sabine origin.