Lactantius, Divin. Instit. iv. 3, “Itaque et Jupiter a precantibus pater vocatur, et Saturnus, et Janus, et Liber, et ceteri deinceps, quod Lucilius in deorum consilio irridet:
Ut nemo sit nostrum, quin aut pater optimus divum
Ut Neptunus pater, Liber, Saturnus pater, Mars,
Janus, Quirinus pater nomen dicatur ad unum.”
Compare Aulus Gellius, v. 12. 5; Servius, on Virgil, Georg. ii. 4. Roman goddesses who received the title of Mother were Vesta, Earth, Ops, Matuta, and Lua. As to Mother Vesta see The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 229; as to Mother Earth see H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, Nos. 3950-3955, 3960; as to Mother Ops see Varro, De lingua Latina, v. 64; as to Mother Matuta see L. Preller, Römische Mythologie,3 i. 322 sqq.; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer,2 pp. 110 sqq.; id., s.v. “Mater Matuta,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 2462 sqq. I cite these passages only to prove that the Romans commonly applied the titles “father” and “mother” to their deities. The inference that these titles implied paternity or maternity is my own, but in the text I have given some reasons for thinking that the Romans themselves accepted the implication. Mr. W. Warde Fowler, on the other hand, prefers to suppose that the titles were employed in a merely figurative sense to “imply the dependence of the human citizen upon his divine protector”; but he admits that what exactly the Romans understood by pater and mater applied to deities is not easy to determine (The Religious Experience of the Roman People, pp. 155-157). He makes at the same time the important observation that the Romans never, so far as he is aware, applied the terms Father and Mother to foreign gods, but “always to di indigetes, those on whom the original Roman stock looked as their fellow-citizens and guardians.” The limitation is significant and seems more naturally explicable on my hypothesis than on that of my learned friend.