oral tradition, as in India. But all that is buried, and the relics of the later times barely suffice to prove that it once existed.
By putting the knightly poetry and folk-cults quite aside, then, we can even now determine something more of this (the) Classical religion. But in doing so there is a third pitfall to be avoided — the opposing of Greek religion to Roman religion. For in reality there was no such opposition.
Rome is only one of innumerable city-states that arose during the great epoch of colonization. It was built by Etruscans. From the religious point of view it was re-created under the Etruscan dynasty of the sixth century, and it is possible indeed that the Capitoline group of deities, Jupiter, Juno, Minerva — which at that time replaced the ancient trinity, Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, of the "Numa" religion — was in some way connected with the family cult of the Tarquins, in which case Minerva, as goddess of the city, is unmistakably a copy of Athene Polias.[1] The cults of this single city are properly comparable only with those of individual Greek-speaking cities of the same degree of maturity, say Sparta or Thebes, which were in nowise more colourful. The little that in these latter discloses itself as generally Hellenic will also prove to be generally Italian. And as for the claim that the "Roman" religion is distinguished from that of the Greek city-states by the absence of myth — what is the basis of our knowledge on the point? We should know nothing at all of the great god-sagas of the Springtime i we had only the festival-calendar and the public cults of the Greek city-states to go upon, just as we should learn nothing of Jesus's piety from the proceedings of the Council of Ephesus or of that of St. Francis from a church constitution of the Reformation. Menelaus and Helen were for the Laconian state-cult tree-deities and nothing more. The Classical myth derives from a period when the Poleis with their festivals and sacral constitutions were not yet in existence, when there was not only no Rome, but no Athens. With the religious duties and notions of the cities — which were eminently rational — it has no connexion at all. Indeed, myth and cult are even less in touch with one another in the Classical Culture than in others. The myth, moreover, is in no way a creation of the Hellenic culture-field as a whole — it is not "Greek" — but originated (like the stories of Jesus's childhood and the Grail legend) in this and that group, quite local, under pressure of deep inward stirrings. For instance, the idea of Olympus arose in Thessaly and thence, as a common property of all educated persons, spread out to Cyprus and to Etruria, thus, of course, involving Rome. Etruscan painting presupposes it as a thing of common knowledge, and therefore the Tarquins and their
- ↑ Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, p. 41. What has been said above (p. 191) concerning the Talmudic religion applies also to the Etruscan religion by which all Italy — i.e., no less than half of the Classical field — was so deeply influenced. It lies outside the province of both the conventional "Classical" philologies and in consequence has been practically ignored, as compared with the Achæan and Doric religions. In reality (as its tombs, temples, and myths prove), it forms with them a single unit of spirit and evolution.
