In pure animism the spirits are nameless; when their residence and functions are more clearly recognised they acquire names, and these names are naturally masculine or feminine among peoples whose language is not genderless, as was the case with the Sumerians of Babylonia.[298] This would seem to be the first step on the path to a personal conception of divinity. But there are signs that the Romans had not got very far on this path when we begin to know anything about their religion. I have already alluded to the formula "Sive deus sive dea," which occurs in the ritual of the Fratres Arvales, in the formula given by Cato for making a new clearing, and elsewhere;[299] and indeed there seems to have been always some uncertainty about the sex of one or two well-known deities, such as Pales and Pomonus or Pomona.[300] It is not, therefore, _a priori_ probable that the process of personalisation (if I may coin the word) should have proceeded, at the period we are treating of, so far as to ascribe to these named deities of both sexes the characteristics of human beings in social life and intercourse. Yet Varro, as Dr. Frazer points out, is quoted by St. Augustine as saying that his ancestors (that is, as Augustine adds), "veteres Romanos," believed in the marriage of gods and in their procreative power.[301] If Varro wrote "maiores meos," as he seems to have done, of whom was he really thinking? Was Augustine's comment based on the rest of Varro's text, or was he jumping to a conclusion which would naturally serve his own purpose? Varro, of course, was not a Roman, but from Reate in the Sabine country. But even if he were thinking of Rome, how far back would his knowledge extend? The Romans had known Greek married gods for three or four centuries before his time, and he may quite well be thinking of these. Of the _di indigetes_ of an earlier period he could hardly know more than we do ourselves; his only sources of information were the facts of the cult and the books of the pontifices. The facts of the cult, so far as he and others have recorded them, suggest no pairing of deities, no "sacred marriage."[302] The pontifical books, which contained rules and formulae for the proper invocation of deities by their right names, do indeed seem to have suggested a certain conjunction of male and female divine names; and it is just possible that this is what Varro had in his mind when he wrote the passage seized upon by Augustine. I will proceed at once to examine this evidence, as it is incidentally of great interest in the history of Italian religion; and Dr. Frazer will probably allow that his conclusion must stand or fall by it.