=350. Roman Religion Originally Developed by Italian Farmers.=--The old Italian farmers who shaped this religion were singularly lacking in imagination. Very few are the myths for which the poets can claim a non-Greek origin. The world is conceived of as being full of deities which often are so little personified that one cannot be sure of their actual sex: “Be propitious, O Divine One (_numen_), be thou male or be thou female!” is the proper formula for beginning many ancient prayers. Some of these divinities, to be sure, are well-defined and powerful gods such as Jupiter the Sky-God, Mars the War-God, and Juno the potent and matronly spouse of Jupiter. Such deities came with the ancestors of the Italians when they wandered down from the North into that southern peninsula which they occupied many centuries ago. Other divinities are ancient adoptions from the Etruscans or from the Greeks. Minerva, the protectress of such female arts as weaving and spinning and later of the more masculine arts, sciences, and learning, is pretty clearly the Minerva of the Etruscans, and has caught many attributes from the Pallas Athena of the Greeks. Apollo came, perhaps, via Etruria, where they called him Aplu, and not directly from Hellas, but no temple was built to him until after Greek as well as Etruscan influence in Rome had become very strong. Diana or Luna (“Madame Moon”) was an old moon goddess, possibly the same as the Etruscan Losna, and only by a late and very unfortunate identification has she become confounded with Apollo’s Greek sister Artemis, the virgin huntress on the Arcadian hills. One great goddess, however, Venus, is probably a good old Italian deity of substantial homely virtues: she is still invoked as Venus Cloacina (“Venus the Purifier”), when it is necessary to cleanse the great sewers; a function seldom remembered when giddy youths confound her with the Greek Aphrodite, and beg her to help their illicit love affairs! 351. =Native Italian Gods: Janus, Saturn, Flora. The Lares and Penates.=--All these gods and certain other familiar deities such as Mercury patron of trade and gain, Neptune lord of the sea, Vulcan the clever smith, and finally, but in nowise least, Vesta the hearth goddess, and Ceres the Mistress of the Corn, make up the official “Great Gods” in whose honor the public games are held, and to whom Emperors and Consuls proffer vows and sacrifice. [Illustration: FARMER’S CALENDAR: showing festivals each month.]