Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/179

 THE ROMAN GODS 165 over her head, shoulders, and back. Juno Reglna, like Juppiter Rex, carries the scepter as a distinctive attri- bute. Lucina : Ovid, Fast. ii. 449 : Gratia Luciriae. dedit haec tibi nomina lucus, Aut quia principium tu, Dea, lucis habes. Horace, Car. Saec. 15 : Sive tu Lucina, probas vocari Seu Genitalis. Shak., Pericles iii. 1, 10, Cymbeline v. 4, 43 ; Chaucer, Knight's Tale 1227. IV. DIVINITIES OF DEATH 213. The idea of a general realm of the dead did not become thoroughly prevalent at Eome, as has been shown in 9 ; and accordingly no divinities conceived of as rulers of such a domain were independently developed among the Romans. The coming of death itself, how- ever, was ascribed to the activity of a god who ruled sometimes terribly, and again gently, who was named Orcus, although his form was not fully perfected in the minds of his worshipers. Besides him there appeared un- der various appellations a motherly guardian of the dead, who was probably really Mother 1 Earth (Tellus or Terra Mater), inasmuch as she received the dead into her bosom. From the Manes and Lares she was named Mania, Lara or Larunda ; from the Larvae, Avia Larvarum (' grand- m other of ghosts'), and like them was represented as of frightful form. Finally, on account of the silence of 1 Tellus was worshiped as a mother especially by means of the Fordicidia, a sacrifice of pregnant cows.