The religion of the early Romans was at once both simple and elaborate. There were no temples in the later sense; no cult images of the gods. But religion was thought to consist primarily in the employment of a scrupulous care in all dealings with the divine powers, that is to say the ritual had to be exactly performed so that the numina might be forced, if need be, to perform the things the suppliant desired. Such a concept naturally led to the development even in this earliest time of an elaborate ritual, on the exact performance of which all depended. This character Roman religion maintained to the end. So fixed was the ritual that the ancient litanies could not be changed. We have still preserved the songs of the Arval Brothers and of the Salii, which are of such primitive form that in the historical period they were largely unintelligible to those who sang them; yet no syllable of the venerable formulae might be varied. Furthermore religion was regarded as a state affair. It was by state action that certain gods had been recognized and given a kind of citizenship; no others therefore were of concern to the Romans unless the state adopted them also by formal decree. The state likewise determined where and when worship should be carried on. These legislative enactments, according to tradition, had followed the actual establishment of the state by Romulus; and in the historical period the establishment of the religious organization of a colony, for example, was regularly subsequent to the political. In fact the Romans said that the earliest religious system had been established by King Numa, as the political system had been made by Romulus, for they had a natural tendency to regard their institutions as the creations of individuals. The historical significance of this belief for us is that the “religion of Numa” marked the earliest stage of which the Romans were conscious. It is that indicated in the calendars by the entries in large letters.