except empty externals to the semi-political colleges of pontifices and augurs, and to the important new foundation of _duoviri sacris faciundis_; the old Italian ritual of simple apparatus and detailed ceremony is becoming overshadowed by the showy ceremonial of lectisternia and supplicationes. Was there no reaction, we may well ask, against a tendency so expansive and denationalizing? I answer this question with hesitation, for so far as I am aware it has never yet been fully investigated. But I am strongly disposed to believe that there was such a reaction in the third century B.C., in the period, that is, between the Samnite wars and Hannibal’s invasion of Italy. This, unlike the preceding century, was a period of almost uniform success of the Roman arms, and one in which the State was at no time in serious peril; and the temptation to have recourse to strange divinities, as a patient betakes himself to new physicians, would not present itself to the minds of the senate or the priesthoods. If we pursue the history of the temple-foundations of this period, under Aust’s invaluable guidance, the result is very remarkable. Between 304 and 217 B.C. we know the dates of twenty-five foundations; and of these no less than twenty are in honour of indigenous, or at least what I may perhaps call, home-made deities. No doubt there is a growing tendency to identify Roman gods with Greek; but this does not show itself plainly till the end of the century, and the only genuine Greek foundation is that of Aesculapius, the consequence of a severe pestilence in 293 B.C. Three or four, e. g. those of Fors Fortuna, Minerva Capta, and Feronia, were probably of non-Roman origin; but they were transplanted from the near neighbourhood of Rome and may almost count as indigenous.