Religion being thus for centuries so peculiarly an official matter of settled tradition, no unauthorised myth-maker could get a hearing. Even what was known would be kept as far as possible a corporation secret,[406] as indeed were some of the mystery practices in Egypt and Greece. But whereas in Greece the art of sculpture, once introduced, was stimulated by and reacted on mythology in every temple in every town, the rigid limitation of early Roman public life to the business of war would on that side have closed the door on sculpture,[407] even if it could otherwise have found entrance. The check laid on the efflorescence of the religious instinct was a double check on the efflorescence of art. The net result is described with some exaggeration by an eminent mythologist, in a passage which reduces to something like unity of idea the tissues of contradiction spun by Mommsen:-- For the Latins their Gods, although their name was legion, remained mysterious beings without forms, feelings, or passions; and they influenced human affairs without sharing or having any sympathy with human hopes, fears, or joys. Neither had they, like the Greek deities, any society among themselves. There was for them no Olympos where they might gather and take counsel with the father of Gods and men. They had no parentage, no marriage, no offspring. They thus became a mere multitude of oppressive beings, living beyond the circle of human interests, yet constantly interfering with it; and their worship was thus as terrible a bondage as any under which the world has yet suffered. Not being associated with any definite bodily shapes, they could not, like the beautiful creations of the Greek mind, promote the growth of the highest art of the sculptor, the painter, and the poet.[408] It is necessary here to make some corrections and one expansion. The statement as to parentage, marriage, and offspring is clearly wrong. Cox here follows Keightley, whose pre-scientific view is still common. Keightley admits that the early Latin Gods and Goddesses occur in pairs, as Saturn and Ops, Janus and Jana; and that they were called _Patres_ and _Matres_.[409] To assert after this that they were never thought of as generating offspring, merely because the bulk of the old folk-mythology is lost, is to ascribe uncritically to the Latins an abstention from the most universal forms of primitive myth-making. The proposition as to "terrible bondage," again, cannot stand historically; for, to say nothing of the religions of Mexico and Palestine, and some of those of India, the Roman life was certainly much less darkened by creed than has been that of many Christian countries, for instance Protestant Scotland and Catholic Spain.