The large account of Roman deities furnished by Saint Augustine, in his ‘De Civitate Dei,’ constitutes for us the principal representation of the great work of Varro, now lost, on the ‘Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum.’ Notwithstanding the multitudinous development of the theurgic system, the ‘_De Civitate_’ tends to support the belief that it was not vivified, like the system of the Greeks, by the intense pervading power of a vigorous and prolific imagination. The ‘Fasti’ of Ovid may perhaps be referred to as sustaining the same opinion. And Heyne in his commentary on Virgil has observed upon the comparative dulness and dryness of the early mythology of Rome: _Italici mythi longe a Græcæ fabulæ suavitate absunt; nec varietas grata inest_[520]. In a later portion of this work[521] I shall endeavour to show, that a similar character apparently attaches to the religious system of Troy: not so much a purity or simplicity, as a comparative poverty and hardness; and an indisposition in the inventions to assume those graceful forms, of which the Grecian Theo-mythology, as exhibited in Homer, is so full. And again, when we pass from Homer to Hesiod, we find a great mass of religious fable, either added by the later poet, or grown up in the interval between the two. Hesiod’s depositories are much more numerously peopled: but we have passed at once from the poetry of a theogony to its merest prose, when we compare his manner of touch or handling, and his ideas on these subjects, with those of Homer. And, as on other grounds we may consider Hesiod to represent the Pelasgian side of the Greek mind, we seem justified in referring the distinctive tone of his mythology in some degree to his Pelasgian characteristics. But independently of confirmation from the case of Troy, and from the tone of Hesiod, the character of the old Italian mythology, so devoid of imagination, force, and grace, leads us to ascribe these properties, when we find them abound in the Greek supernaturalism, to its non-Pelasgian, that is, to its Hellenic source. _Its ritual development fuller._ When, however, we turn to another form of development in religious systems, we find the case entirely different: I mean the development in positive observances of all kinds, and in fixed institutions of property and class. Here the religion of Rome was large and copious. Polybius has left upon record, in a most remarkable passage, his admiration of the Roman system of δεισιδαιμονία, which had, he says, been so got up, and carried to such a point, that it could not be exceeded. It was all done, in his opinion, on account of the multitude. Were States composed of the wise, the case would have been different: but as the people are full of levity and passion, λείπεται τοῖς ἀδήλοις φόβοις καὶ τῇ τοιαύτῃ τραγωδίᾳ τὰ πλήθη συνέχειν[522].