Beginnings of the City-state: the oppidum. The earliest historical Rome, the city of the four regions; to this belongs the surviving religious calendar. This calendar described; the basis of our knowledge of early Roman religion. It expresses a life agricultural, political, and military. Days of gods distinguished from days of man. Agricultural life the real basis of the calendar; gradual effacement of it. Results of a fixed routine in calendar; discipline, religious confidence. Exclusion from it of the barbarous and grotesque. Decency and order under an organising priestly authority

Sources of knowledge about Roman deities. What did the Romans themselves know about them? No personal deity in the religion of the family. Those of the City-state are numina, marking a transition from animism to polytheism. Meaning of numen. Importance of names, which are chiefly adjectival, marking functional activity. Tellus an exception. Importance of priests in development of dei. The four great Roman gods and their priests: Janus, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus. Characteristics of each of these in earliest Rome. Juno and the difficulties she presents. Vesta

No temples in the earliest Rome; meaning of fanum, ara, lucus, sacellum. No images of gods in these places, until end of regal period. Thus deities not conceived as persons. Though masculine and feminine they were not married pairs; Dr. Frazer's opinion on this point. Examination of his evidence derived from the libri sacerdotum; meaning of Nerio Martis. Such combinations of names suggest forms or manifestations of a deity's activity, not likely to grow into personal deities without Greek help. Meaning of pater and mater applied to deities; procreation not indicated by them. The deities of the Indigitamenta; priestly inventions of a later age. Usener's theory of Sondergötter criticised so far as it applies to Rome

Main object of ius divinum to keep up the pax deorum; meaning of pax in this phrase. Means towards the maintenance of the pax: sacrifice and prayer, fulfilment of vows, lustratio, divination. Meaning of sacrificium. Little trace of sacramental sacrifice. Typical sacrifice of ius divinum: both priest and victim must be acceptable to the deity; means taken to secure this. Ritual of slaughter: examination and porrectio of entrails. Prayer; the phrase Macte esto and its importance in explaining Roman sacrifice. Magical survivals in Roman and Italian prayers; yet they are essentially religious

Vota (vows) have suggested the idea that Roman worship was bargaining. Examination of private vows, which do not prove this; of public vows, which in some degree do so. Moral elements in both these. Other forms of vow: evocatio and devotio.

Lustratio: meaning of lustrare in successive stages of Roman experience. Lustratio of the farm and pagus; of the city; of the people (at Rome and Iguvium); of the army; of the arms and trumpets of the army: meaning of lustratio in these last cases, both before and after a campaign

Recapitulation of foregoing lectures. Weak point of the organised State religion: it discouraged individual development. Its moral influence mainly a disciplinary one; and it hypnotised the religious instinct.

Growth of a new population at end of regal period, also of trade and industry. New deities from abroad represent these changes: Hercules of Ara Maxima; Castor and Pollux; Minerva. Diana of the Aventine reflects a new relation with Latium. Question as to the real religious influence of these deities. The Capitoline temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, of Etruscan origin. Meaning of cult-titles Optimus Maximus, and significance of this great Jupiter in Roman religious experience

Plan of this and following lectures. The formalised Roman religion meets with perils, material and moral, and ultimately proves inadequate. Subject of this lecture, the introduction of Greek deities and rites; but first a proof that the Romans were a really religious people; evidence from literature, from worship, from the practice of public life, and from Latin religious vocabulary.

Temple of Ceres, Liber, Libera (Demeter, Dionysus, Persephone); its importance for the date of Sibylline influence at Rome. Nature of this influence; how and when it reached Rome. The keepers of the "Sibylline books"; new cults introduced by them. New rites: lectisternia and supplicationes, their meaning and historical importance