Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/203

Rh ful, creditor. It is plain that such a religion was fitted rather than to foster artistic and speculative views. When the Greek had clothed the simple thoughts of primitive times with human flesh and blood, the ideas of the gods thus formed not only became the elements of plastic and poetic art, but acquired also that universality and elasticity which are the profoundest characteristics of human nature, and for that very reason are essential to all religions that aspire to rule the world. Through such ideas the simple view of nature became expanded into the conception of a cosmogony, the homely moral notion became enlarged into a principle of universal humanity; and for a long period the Greek religion was enabled to embrace within it the physical and metaphysical views—the whole ideal development of the nation, and to expand in depth and breadth with the increase of its contents, until imagination and speculation rent asunder the vessel which had nursed them. But in Latium the embodiment of the conceptions of deity continued so wholly transparent that it afforded no opportunity for the training either of artist or poet, and the Latin religion always held a distant and indeed hostile attitude towards art. As the god was not, and could not be, aught else than the spiritualization of an earthly phenomenon, this same earthly counterpart naturally formed his place of abode (templum) and his image; walls and effigies made by the hands of men seemed only to obscure and to embarrass the spiritual conception. Accordingly the original Roman worship had no images of the gods or houses set apart for them; and although the gods were at an early period worshipped in Latium, probably in imitation of the Greeks, by means of images, and had little chapels (ædiculæ) built for them, such a figurative representation was reckoned contrary to the laws of Numa, and was generally regarded as an impure and foreign innovation. The Roman religion could exhibit no image of a god peculiar to it, with the exception, perhaps, of the doubleheaded Ianus; and Varro even in his time derided the desire of the multitude for puppets and effigies. The utter want of productive power in the Roman religion was likewise the ultimate cause of the thorough poverty which marked Roman poetry and still more Roman speculation.

The same distinctive character was manifest, moreover, in the domain of its practical uses. The sole practical gain, which accrued to the Roman community from their religion,