Note 227 — ROMAN PEOPLE (continued 3)

For the Indigitamenta see below, p. 159; R.F. p. 341; R. Peter's able article in Myth. Lex., s.v. Scholars do not seem to me to have reckoned sufficiently with the tendency of a legal priesthood, devoted to the strict maintenance of religious minutiae, to elaborate and organise the material for god-making which was within their reach. To judge by the elaboration of the ritual at Iguvium, the same tendency must have existed in other kindred Italian communities, both to develop ritualistic priesthoods, and through them to elaborate the ritual. This is, I think, the weak point of Usener's reasoning in his Götternamen, and as applied to Roman deities it is the weak point of an interesting article by von Domaszewski, reprinted in his Abhandlungen zur röm. Religion, p. 155 foll.