Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/181

 THE ROMAN GODS 167 VI. DIVINITIES ORIGINALLY FOREIGN 215. Towards the end of the epoch of the kings the Etruscan culture, and with it, and through its agency, the culture of Greece, which already prevailed in southern Italy, began to exert an influence at Rome also. The Sibyl- line books, originating at Cumae, and containing a col- lection of Greek oracles, were particularly instrumental in introducing into Rome the worship of a whole multitude of Greek divinities. As the process went on, either the distinguishing characteristics of the foreign divinities were transferred to those of the native spirits of activity to which they were by nature closely related, or with the foreign ideas the foreign names also were borrowed. So Minerva originally, in all probability, represented only the divine power that produces thought and under- standing in the human race, and was, at the same time, the protectress of expert workmanship. Her recep- tion into the trinity ( 211) worshiped at the Capi- tol she owed entirely to her identification with Pallas Athena, whose characteristics were now attributed to Minerva, except that she did not become properly a war goddess. 216. Venus, likewise, whose name is connected with venustus (' charming '), was not worshiped at Rome in the oldest times; it was the Greek Aphrodite, coming from southern Italy, and afterwards from Mount Eryx in Sicily, that found entrance into Rome under that name. Her oldest temple was in the grove of Libitina, a goddess of desire and of death ; and her epithets, Murcia and Cloacina, were undoubtedly borrowed from particular localities.