[Footnote 402: The fact that the Etruscans, like the other Italian peoples, remained at the stage of unintellectual formalism (Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, ii, 528-29; Schwegler, _Römische Geschichte_, i, 273), suffices to show that not in race genius but in stage and conditions of culture lies the explanation. All early religion in official hands is formalist--witness the Pentateuch. The preoccupied Italians left their cults, as did the Phoenicians, to archæological officials, while the leisured Greeks carried them into poetry and art under conditions which fostered these activities.] [Footnote 403: The point is discussed in the author's _Christianity and Mythology_, 2nd ed. pp. 74-90; _Pagan Christs_, 2nd ed. pp. 45-46.] [Footnote 404: Whether or not we accept Mommsen's view (bk. i, c. xiv) that the use of the alphabet in Italy dates from about 1000 B.C. On this cp. Schwegler, i, 36.] [Footnote 405: Mommsen, _History of Rome_, bk. i, ch. xii, Eng. tr. ed. 1868, i. 189. Cp. Boissier, as cited, i, 354, as to the respective functions of priests and pontiffs.] [Footnote 406: It is only through fragmentary vestiges (Servius on Virgil, _Georg._ i, 21; cp. Varro in Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, vi, 7-10) that we know the contents of the book of _Indigitamenta_ kept by the pontifices. It seems to have been a list, not of the _Dii Indigetes_ commonly so-called, but of all the multitudinous powers presiding over the various operations of life. See Schwegler, _Römische Geschichte_, i, 32; Teuffel, _Hist. of Roman Lit._ ed. Schwabe, Eng. trans. 1900, i, 104; Boissier, _La religion romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins_, i, 4, and _note_. "I have no doubt," writes Mr. Ward Fowler (_The Religious Experience of the Roman People_, 1911, p. 168), "that Wissowa is right in explaining _Indigitamenta_ as _Gebetsformeln_, formulæ of invocation; in which the most important matter, we may add, would be the name of the deity. See his _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, p. 177 foll." Corssen put this view before Wissowa.] [Footnote 407: According to Varro (cited by Augustine, _De civ. Dei_, iv, 31), the early Romans for 170 years worshipped the Gods without images.] [Footnote 408: Rev. Sir G.W. Cox, _Mythology of the Aryan Nations_, ed. 1882, p. 169.] [Footnote 409: Keightley, _Mythol. of Anc. Greece and Italy_, 1838, pp. 506-7.] [Footnote 410: Meyer, ii, 531.] [Footnote 411: Mommsen, ch. 12.] [Footnote 412: Valerius Maximus, i, 3.] [Footnote 413: Livy, xxv, 1.] [Footnote 414: _Id._ xxv, 12.] [Footnote 415: _Id._ xxix, 10, 14.] [Footnote 416: Cp. Boissier, as cited, i, 39.] [Footnote 417: Boissier, i, 346. Cp. Gibbon, ch. 2, Bohn ed. i, 40-41, and Wenck's note.] [Footnote 418: Livy, xxxix, 18. The farrago of charges of crime we have no more reason to credit than we have in regard to the similar charges made later against the Christians.] [Footnote 419: Cp. Carl Peter, _Geschichte Roms_, 1881, i, 550.]