According to Varro, Rome remained 170 years without statues; the idea of placing them in the temples came from abroad. It was to imitate Etruria that a painted wooden Jupiter was placed in the Capitol; on the eve of festivals they gave him a coat of paint for him to appear in all his glory. These ancient customs were never quite lost, they were preserved in the country, where the peasants honoured the gods by covering old trunks of trees with bands, and in piously pouring oil on blocks of stone. At Rome, even whilst all the temples were being filled by Grecian masterpieces the antique Vesta would not allow a single statue in her sanctuary; she was only represented by the sacred flame which was never put out.
It is probable, then, that if Rome had not known Greece, anthropomorphism would have stopped short. The Roman has an instinctive repugnance to making his gods beings too much like us; to him they are not real persons, having an individual existence, but only divine manifestations, numina; and this name by which he calls them indicates perfectly the idea he has of them. Every time the divinity seems to reveal itself to the world in some manner (and as he is very religious, he believes he sees him everywhere), he notes with care this new revelation, gives it a name and worships it. These gods he creates every minute are nothing else but divine acts, and that is why they are so numerous.
No other nation has ever possessed such a vast Pantheon; and these words can be applied to the whole of Italy, that a writer of the imperial epoch lends to a woman of the Campania: “Our country is so peopled with divinities that it is much easier to meet a god than a man.” This is also the reason why the Romans more than any other nation had a taste for divinised abstractions. As in reality all their gods, even the greatest, are only divine qualities or attributes and as they always preserve to some extent their abstract character, it is not surprising that the habit was soon formed of introducing simple abstractions in their company. This is a custom as a rule only introduced into religions when they become old, but in Rome we notice it from the most ancient times. Tullus Hostilius built a temple to Fear and to Pallidness; and Salvation or Prosperity of the Roman nation was early a divinity much worshipped.
Later many exaggerations were made in this manner. During the empire all the ventures of the emperors were worshipped and statues were raised to the Security of the Century and to the Indulgence of the Master. These strange personifications, which would never have entered the mind of a Greek, were the result of the manner in which the Romans of all times conceived divinity. Polytheism was formed by them by way of an abstract analysis and not, as in Greece, by a kind of outburst of imagination and enthusiasm. They always remained faithful to this method, and to the end placed in the sky abstractions rather than living beings.
This nation, so timid, scrupulous, scared, that to protect a man one felt the need of surrounding him by gods from his birth to his death, that had such a deep respect for divinity, thinking to meet it everywhere, seemed to be the prey of every superstition.
The fathers of the Catholic Church have compared the institutions of Numa, with their minute and multiplied proscriptions, to Mosaic law. The Romans, who prided themselves on following them to the letter, could be exposed to becoming absolutely like the Jews; and one asks how it is that, amongst such a devoted people, religious authority did not end by dominating over all others. What preserved them from this fate was their great political instinct.
No other nation has ever been so taken up as have the Romans with the importance of the rights of the state, and everything was sacrificed to that—their oldest customs and their dearest prejudices. It was a general belief amongst them that dead persons became gods and protected those nearest to them, and were as close as possible to those they should save; they were buried in the house and thus became good spirits. One day, however, the law ordained, by reason of hygiene, that nobody should be buried within the precincts of the towns, and everybody obeyed this law. This example shows that in Rome nothing could resist civil power; paternal authority, in spite of the extent of its rights, gave way before it.
The father of the family is the absolute master of his children; he can sell or kill his child, but if his son is in public office the father has to obey him like the others, and when he meets him on his path he must get off his horse to let him pass.
Roman religion, so powerful, so respected as it was, had to submit to the same yoke. It was thus subject to the state, or rather was blended to it. What most aided religion to attain this result was the manner in which it recruited its priests. “Our ancestors,” says Cicero, “were never wiser nor more surprised by the gods than when they decided that the same persons would preside over religion and govern the republic. It was by this means that the magistrates and pontiffs fulfilling their duties with wisdom, agreed together to save the state.” In Rome, religious functions were not separated from political ones, and there was nothing incompatible between them.
Any one could act as pontiff in the same time as consul and for the same motives. Those who wished to become such were never required to possess any special knowledge; it was sufficient for attaining these duties to have served his country in the deliberating assemblies or the battle-field. Those that obtained them did not, whilst exercising them, take a narrow and exclusive attitude, so common to sacerdotal castes; they continued to mix with the world, they sat in the senate in the same time as in the great colleges of priests of which they formed a member; their new functions, far from taking them away from the government of their countries, gave them more right to take part in it.