With the old Romans the common method of elaboration lay in the invention of cult-titles, of which the different kinds have been distinguished and explained by Dr. J. B. Carter in his treatise "de Deorum Romanorum cognominibus."[310] Most of them are suggestive of function or character, as, e.g., Janus Patulcius Clusivius, or Jupiter Lucetius, Ops Opifera; sometimes they doubled the idea, as in Aius Locutius, or Anna Perenna, or Fors Fortuna; and in one or two cases they seem to have combined two deities together in rather puzzling conjunctions, which usually, however, admit of some possible explanation, as Janus Junonius, or Ops Consiva (i.e. Ops belonging to Consus).[311] In the Iguvian ritual, which is the highly-elaborated work of a priesthood as active as the Roman, we find combinations of not less than four names:[312] Cerfe Martie, Praestita Cerfia Cerfi Martii, Tursa Cerfia Cerfi Martii, which may perhaps be rendered "Spirit of Mars, protecting (female) spirit of the (male) spirit of Mars, fear-inspiring (female) spirit of the (male) spirit of Mars."
Such strange multiple combinations as these suggest that expressions like Moles Martis or Virites Quirini are only another form of the usual cult-title, expressing adoration of the power of the deity addressed; and it is only reasonable to explain the others of the same group on the same principle. As we have seen, Roman scholars themselves explained Nerio Martis as equivalent to Virtus Martis; Herie Iunonis probably means something of the same kind; the others are not so easily explained, and guesswork about them is unprofitable. But I hope I have said enough to show that there is absolutely no good ground for supposing that these combinations of names in nominative and genitive indicate a relationship of any kind except a qualitative one. Abstract qualities, let us note, are usually feminine in Latin, and I think it is not improbable that abstractions such as Fides and Salus, which were deified at a very early period at Rome, may have reached divinity by attachment to some god from whom they subsequently became again separated.[313] And lastly, we can trace the same tendency to combine names and ideas together far down the course of Roman history; witness the combination of Genius with cities, legions, gods, etc., as well as with the individual man, and again such expressions as Pietas Legionis, by analogy with which von Domaszewski, wrongly as I think, would explain those we have been discussing.[314]
Before leaving this complicated and cloudy system of divine nomenclature, it is as well to ask the question once more, even if we cannot answer it, whether if left to itself it might have developed into a polytheistic system of personal deities. I will give my own opinion for what it is worth. I do not think that such a result could have been reached without the magic touch of the Greek poet and artist, or the arrival of Greek deities and their images in Latium. Professor Sayce, in his Gifford lectures on the religion of Babylonia, has shown how the non-Semitic Sumerians knew only of spirits and demons until the Semite arrived in the Persian Gulf with his personal gods of both sexes;[315] and I gather that he does not suppose that without such immigration the Sumerian ideas of divinity could have become personalised. The question is not exactly the same at Rome; for there the spirit world had passed into the hands of an organised priesthood occupied with ritual, and especially with its terminological aspect; and the chance of personalisation, if it were there at all, lay in the importance of the functional name. But the question is after all beside the mark; we shall see what happened when the Greeks arrived. We may be content at present to note the fact that they found the functional terminology sufficiently advanced to take advantage of it, and to revolutionise the whole Roman conception of the divine.
Dr. Frazer gives me an opportunity of adverting to another point bearing on the question we are discussing,—the way in which the old Roman thought of his deities. "It is difficult," he says,[316] "to deny that the epithets Pater and Mater, which the Romans bestow on so many of their gods, do really imply paternity and maternity; if this implication be admitted, the inference appears to be inevitable that these divine beings were supposed to exercise sexual functions, etc." In a footnote he adds a number of formidable-looking references, meant, I suppose, to prove this point. I have closely examined these passages; what they do prove is simply that many deities were called Pater and Mater. Not one even suggests that paternity and maternity were in such cases to be understood literally and, so to speak, physically. The two that come nearest to what he is looking for are those from Varro and Lactantius. Varro says[317] that Ops was called Mater because she was identical with Terra, who was, of course, Terra Mater: "Haec enim—
'terris gentes omnes peperit et resumit denuo,
quae dat cibaria,' ut ait Ennius."[318] It is clear, then, that neither Varro nor Ennius understood this title of Ops and Terra in Dr. Frazer's sense of the word. The quotation from the early Christian father Lactantius, which contains three well-known lines of Lucilius, might possibly deceive those who neglect to turn it out and read the context; there we find at once that not even Lactantius could attribute to these epithets the meaning which Dr. Frazer wishes to put on them. He would have been as glad to do so as Dr. Frazer himself, though for a very different reason; but what he actually wrote is this:—
"Omnem Deum qui ab homine colitur, necesse est inter solennes ritus et precationes patrem nuncupari, non tantum honoris gratia, verum etiam rationis; quod et antiquior est homine, et quod vitam, salutem, victum praestat, ut pater. Itaque ut Iuppiter a precantibus pater vocatur, etc."[319]
Dr. Frazer's quotation begins with this last sentence; it is a pity that he did not read the context. If he had read it, his candour would have compelled him to confess that not even a Christian father, with a keen sense of what was ridiculous or degrading in the pagan religion, understood the fatherhood of the gods as he wishes to understand it.
But I am wasting time in pressing this point. Dr. Frazer would hardly have used such an argument if he had not been hard put to it. The figurative use of human relationships is surely a common practice, when addressing their deities, of all peoples who have reached the stage of family life. As another distinguished anthropologist says: "The very want of an object tends to supply an object through the imagination; and this will be either the vital energy inherent in things, or the reflex of the human father, who once satisfied his needs (i.e. of the worshipper). So, in Aryan religions, the supreme god is father, Ζεὺς πατἡρ, Diespiter, Marspiter. Ahura-Mazda is a father.... Another analogy shows the relationship of brother and friend, as in the case of Mithra."[320] The Romans themselves were familiar from the first with such figurative use of relationship, as was natural to a people in whom the family instinct was so strong; we have but to think of the pater patratus of the Fetiales,[321] of the Fratres Arvales, or the Fratres Attiedii of Iguvium. What exactly they understood by Pater and Mater when applied to deities is not so easy to determine: we have not the necessary data. They were never applied, I believe, to imported deities, di novensiles; always to di indigetes, those on whom the original Roman stock looked as their fellow-citizens and guardians. And we shall not be far wrong if we conclude that in general they imply the dependence of the human citizen upon his divine protector, and thus bring the usage into line with that of other Aryan peoples. Behind this feeling of dependence there may have been the idea, handed down from remote ages, that Father Sky and Mother Earth were in a sense the parents of all living things; but there is nothing in the Roman religion to suggest that the two were thought of as personally uniting in marriage or a sexual act.
I will sum up this part of the discussion by translating an admirable passage in Aust's book on the Roman religion, with which I am in cordial agreement[322]:—