A fundamental difference between the Greek and Roman religions manifests itself in the matter of magic. Magic was foreign to the Greeks, and was disliked by them: when it appears in their mythology, it is practised by foreigners—_e.g._, Medea, Circe, Hecate—and is "barbarous." In fact, magic belongs to the animistic stage, and is opposed to the higher tendencies of polytheism. The forces of Nature, conceived as _numina_ rather than as moral ideals, may well be influenced by magic to the advantage of the savage; but to control a deity by means other than prayer and good life is antitheistic. Finally, it is not accidental or unmeaning that, on the one hand, the Greeks had oracles while the Italians had none; and on the other hand, that in China and Babylon (which resemble Rome in other pertinent points) divination played as large and as official a part as at Rome. An oracle is the voice of a god; whereas divination is simply sympathetic magic inverted.[17] IV. ITALIAN MYTHS. In sect. 1 it has been said that the Italians had no Nature-myths. The reason why they had none should now be clear: the Italians had no Nature-gods. The sky-spirit, Jupiter, was undoubtedly distinguished from the vault of heaven by the primitive Italians, but he was not generically different from the spirits of vegetation, of sowing, of manuring, &c., and he seems to have been even of inferior dignity to the spirit of doorways.[18] The earth, on the other hand, does not seem to have been conceived of as a spirit even, much less as a goddess; but, if worshipped at all, was worshipped as a fetich.[19] Hence, the absence from Italy of any trace of the myth of the origin of all living creatures from a union between the earth and the sky. Indeed, if by a myth we mean a tale told about gods or heroes, there are no Italian myths.[20] Myths attached to Greek loan-gods were borrowed with the gods from Greece. Myths in which Italian gods figure were borrowed or invented when the Italian gods were identified with Greek gods. Thus the Golden Age myth, for instance, can be referred to the time (A.U.C. 257) when Saturnus was identified with Kronos.[21] And of course, all the myths in which Æneas appears, and the whole mythical connection between Rome and Greece or Troy, are late.[22] Evander,[23] again, who figures in various passages of the _Romane Questions_, owes his existence wholly and solely to the attempt to connect Rome with Greece.