In the earliest periods of Roman civilization, those of the family and the beginnings of the State, the Roman attitude towards the supernatural was, if I am not mistaken, a real contributing cause towards the formation of _virtus_. It was not merely an attitude of business and bargaining. So far as we know it, the common form of address to the gods was not ‘send me what I want—sun, rain, victory, &c., and you shall then have these gifts’; but ‘I give you these sacrifices and expect you to do your part; in taking all this trouble to act correctly by you, I establish a right as against you.’ It is true that in one particular form of dealing with the gods, the vow, or solemn undertaking (_votum_), the transaction wears more the character of a definite bargain; if the god will do certain things, he shall then have his reward. So Cloanthus in Virgil addresses the gods of the sea[1511]— Di, quibus imperium est pelagi, quorum aequora curro, Vobis laetus ego hoc candentem in litore taurum Constituam ante aras, _voti reus_, extaque salsos Proiciam in fluctus et vina liquentia fundam. But the _votum_ was the exception, not the rule; it was a promise made by an individual at some critical moment, not the ordered and recurring ritual of the family or the State. It takes its peculiar form simply because the maker of the vow is not at the particular moment in a position to fulfil it. The normal attitude of the Roman in prayer and sacrifice was not this; it is much more exactly expressed in the formula of the farmer’s prayer already quoted in these pages: ‘Father Mars, I pray and beseech thee be willing and propitious to me, my household, and my slaves; for the which object I have caused this threefold sacrifice to be driven round my farm and land.’ This is the usual and natural attitude of all peoples in sacrificing to their gods, and is far from being peculiar to Rome; but it was the nature of the Roman to express it in a more formal and definite way than others, and this led to an outward religion of formulae which has done much to obscure for us, as indeed for the Romans themselves, the real thought underlying them.