Again, nothing is more characteristic of this period than the contempt and neglect into which the old priesthoods gradually fell; Rome now swarmed with a mongrel population that knew little of them and cared less. In the year 209 B.C. even the priesthood of Jupiter was filled by the youthful black sheep of an old patrician family, apparently for no other reason than the hope that so objectionable a character might be reformed by the many quaint restrictions imposed upon the office[1508]. Of the flamines in general, of the Fratres Arvales, Salii, Sodales Titii, and others of the ancient priesthoods we henceforward hear little or nothing until the revival of learning and religion in the Augustan age. Old forms continued to be used, but mainly for political purposes, like the _obnuntiatio_ or observation of lightning; and only those religious offices which had considerable political power continued to be sought after by men of light and leading. Temples continued to be vowed and built, especially in the earlier part of this period; but their cults are, with few exceptions, of Greek origin, or are new and fanciful forms of old worships, such as the Lares Permarini, Venus Verticordia, Fortuna Equestris, Ops Opifera, Fortuna Huiusce Diei. Before the fall of the Republic a great number of the old temples had fallen almost irretrievably into decay; Augustus tells us in his record of his own reign that he restored no less than eighty-two of them. This too is the period when the identification of Roman gods with Greek became a general fashion; a process which had begun long before, but originally with a genuine meaning and object, not as the sport of a sceptical society educated in Greek speculation. Salus takes the attributes of Hygieia, Mater Matuta becomes Leucothea, Faunus Pan, Sancus Hercules, Carmenta Nicostrate, Neptunus Poseidon, the god of Soracte, Apollo Soranus; and even the greater gods like Mars, Diana, and others assume more and more the likeness and mythical adornment of their supposed Greek equivalents.