Dr. Frazer gives me an opportunity of adverting to another point bearing on the question we are discussing,--the way in which the old Roman thought of his deities. "It is difficult," he says,[316] "to deny that the epithets Pater and Mater, which the Romans bestow on so many of their gods, do really imply paternity and maternity; if this implication be admitted, the inference appears to be inevitable that these divine beings were supposed to exercise sexual functions, etc." In a footnote he adds a number of formidable-looking references, meant, I suppose, to prove this point. I have closely examined these passages; what they do prove is simply that many deities were called Pater and Mater. Not one even suggests that paternity and maternity were in such cases to be understood literally and, so to speak, physically. The two that come nearest to what he is looking for are those from Varro and Lactantius. Varro says[317] that Ops was called Mater because she was identical with Terra, who was, of course, Terra Mater: "Haec enim-- 'terris gentes omnes peperit et resumit denuo, quae dat cibaria,' ut ait Ennius."[318] It is clear, then, that neither Varro nor Ennius understood this title of Ops and Terra in Dr. Frazer's sense of the word. The quotation from the early Christian father Lactantius, which contains three well-known lines of Lucilius, might possibly deceive those who neglect to turn it out and read the context; there we find at once that not even Lactantius could attribute to these epithets the meaning which Dr. Frazer wishes to put on them. He would have been as glad to do so as Dr. Frazer himself, though for a very different reason; but what he actually wrote is this:-- "Omnem Deum qui ab homine colitur, necesse est inter solennes ritus et precationes patrem nuncupari, non tantum honoris gratia, verum etiam rationis; quod et antiquior est homine, et quod vitam, salutem, victum praestat, ut pater. Itaque ut Iuppiter a precantibus pater vocatur, etc."[319] Dr. Frazer's quotation begins with this last sentence; it is a pity that he did not read the context. If he had read it, his candour would have compelled him to confess that not even a Christian father, with a keen sense of what was ridiculous or degrading in the pagan religion, understood the fatherhood of the gods as he wishes to understand it.