Note 298 — ROMAN PEOPLE (continued 3)

See Sayce, Gifford Lectures on the Religions of Egypt and Babylonia, p. 302. An interesting paper on the evolution of dei at Rome out of functional numina will be found in von Domaszewski's Abhandlungen zur röm. Religion, p. 155 foll., based on Usener's theory of Sondergötter. It is ingenious and imaginative, but in my view does not square with the facts as far as we know them. His stages are: (1) momentary function of numina, e.g. lightning; (2) elevation of this into a permanent power or function; (3) consequent limitation of the numen to a special well-marked function; (4) elevation of the numen to a deus, conceived in the likeness of man, and male or female, because man cannot think of power otherwise than on the analogy of male or female creative energy. Lastly, when the deus is complete, the functions of the former numen become attributes or qualities, traces of which we find in the pairs of deities in Gellius, xiii. 23, which are discussed later on in this lecture. Some of these, of course, eventually became separate deities—Salacia, Maia, Lua. As I cannot accept the view that the earliest Roman idea of the supernatural is to be found in comprecationes of a comparatively late period, i.e. in the so-called Indigitamenta, this charmingly symmetrical account has no charm for me beyond its symmetry.