The Great Gods.--The foregoing is the logic of the system on which the Roman religion, as distinguished from the foreign elements afterwards added to it, was based; the religion, however, does not come into view historically till it has begun to rise above such a worship of abstractions or of petty spirits, towards a worship of gods. It was apparently by the growth of larger social organisms that the Latin tribes advanced to the worship of greater gods. While the family religions continued to the end, the tribe had, as in the case of other early peoples, a larger religion than the family, and a union of tribes produced a religion on a still greater scale. The history of early Rome consists of a succession of such fusions of tribes into a larger political whole. When history opens, "Rome is a fully-formed and united city"; but Rome is made up of several tribes, which maintain many separate institutions. The religion of after times bears witness to these successive unions. "Deus Fidius," the god of good faith, is the sacred impersonation of an alliance. Mars and Quirinus are precisely similar to each other, and each has a flamen, or blower of the sacrificial flame, and a staff of twelve salii or dancers. Mars is the Roman, Quirinus the Sabine deity; and we see that the two tribes had, before they were united, very similar worships, which were both kept up after the union. The feriae Latinae, or Latin festival, celebrated on Mons Albanus, is common to the Latin tribes and commemorates their union. Jovis rises into importance with the growth of city life; he comes to be called father Jovis, Jupiter; there are many Jupiters, but the Jupiter of the city of Rome is the greatest and best of all; he bears the title of Optimus Maximus. He rises above Mars, in earlier times the first Roman god, after whom the first month of the year was called, before the month of Janus and the month of Februus, the purifier, were added to it. Janus, the great state-god of opening, was the only one of whom there was a representation; Mars was represented symbolically by a spear, but Janus was figured as a man with two faces. Vesta, the hearth-goddess of the state, was of course a great deity with a very important worship.