Never was the intimate relation between the material and the spiritual more strongly accentuated than in ancient Rome. The acts of the gods and goddesses were a part of the lives of the people. Nothing existed or came to pass in State, society, or private life without its cause being attributed to the supernatural. The consequence was that every Roman citizen looked upon the worship of his deities as a practical duty, the neglect of which entailed practical consequences. At the same time, the possession by woman of an important place in religion was assured, not only by her nature, but also by the fact that reverence for the supernatural was conjoined with every phase of life. Worship was no less a private interest than a public affair. It entered into everything. Consequently, a woman's religious duties and privileges were exactly coextensive with the activities of her life. According to Roman theology, the supernatural world was the precise counterpart of the natural world. Everything had its special deity. There were the powerful gods and goddesses who presided over the national interests, over war and peace, prosperity and chastisement, counsel and justice; there were the divinities who were to be depended upon for the natural phenomena, the seasons, the weather, germination, and harvest; there were also minor spirits upon whose pleasure depended the success of every human action. According to the Roman conception, nothing took place without the assistance of some special divinity whose province it was to further that particular form of activity. It is said that Varro, at the close of the era of the Republic, was able to enumerate thirty thousand of these gods and goddesses. Roman life, public and private, was never for a moment dissociated from religion. The Senate met for deliberation in the temple of Jupiter; an important part of the general's duty on the battlefield was to invoke the god of war; the infliction of punishment on wrong-doers was a sacrifice to offended deity; all public entertainments were held in honor of the gods; all the ordered events in an individual's life were religious ceremonies; for even a family meal was not supposed to be partaken of without a portion being set apart for the household gods; and always on entering a house reverence was first made to the Lares. Hence it necessarily followed that the part woman took in religion was commensurate with her part in Roman life. It can hardly be said that her position in this respect was a subordinate one. If Mars, the god of battle, was the central object of Roman worship, an equal devotion was paid to Vesta at the communal hearth which symbolized the existence and the well-being of the city; and as it was more particularly the province of men to invoke the warlike deity, so from among the women, who were the home-keepers, were selected the honored guardians of the sacred fire. It is also important to observe another fact.