Roman,

heaven, and the tutelary deity of women; and Minerva (q.v.). The stars also had three foremost representatives-Sol, the sun, Luna, the moon, and Telius, the earth. The supreme deities of the infernal regions were Orcus, Dis (Dives, Consus ?), and his wife, the queen of the empire of the shadows, Libitina. The element of the water was presided over by Neptune (q.v.); that of the fire by Vulcan (q.v.), the god of the smithies, and Vesta, the goddess of the domestic hearth and its pure flame. Agriculture and rearing cattle were sacred to the ancient Latin king Saturnus, whose wife, Ops-the riches therefrom accruing-had, like Demeter, her seat in the soil. Ceres, Liber, and Libera, the three Greek deities of agricultural pursuits, were superadded about 500 B.C. Pales, the special protector of the flocks, and his festival (the Palilia) were celebrated on the foundation-day of Rome. Mars himself was the supreme deity of the Romans next to Jupiter. Deities of oracles are Faunus, a deified king, who gave his obscure decisions either in dreams or in strange voices, and his female relative-wife, daughter, or sisterFauna (Bona Dea), who attends only to the female sex; and the Camenæ, prophesying nymphs, of whose number was Egeria, Numa Pompilius's inspirer. The Apollo worship was but of late growth in Rome. The Parcæ represented the unchangeable fate of the individual. Fortuna was, on the contrary, the uncertain chance of destiny, the "luck" to be invoked at all important junctures. Salus, Pax, Concordia, Libertas, Felicitas, Pietas, Virtus, Honos, Spes, and a host of other abstract notions, explain themselves. Venus first became important when identified with Aphrodite; in the same way as Amor, Cupido, and Voluptas were Greek importations, brought into prominence by the poets chiefly. Life, death, and life after death are made concrete, by the Genii, the Lares, Manes, and Penates. See LARES.

Like the Greeks, the early Romans had no "mediators," but addressed their prayers and supplications directly to the individual god. The priesthood, we find, in the classical period, had arisen originally from_the "kindlers (flamines) of Mars," or those who presented burnt-offerings to the early Italian war-god Mars, and the twelve dancers (salii) who in March performed war-dances in his honor. To these came the "Field Brethren,' the "Wolf-repellers," etc.; and thus by degrees an endless and most powerful hierarchy came to be built up. By the side of it, but not identical with it, were certain sacred colleges, who kept the sacred traditions alive, and who were the supreme authority on religious observances. These were the colleges of Pontifices (q.v.) or Bridgebuilders, of Augurs (see AUGURIES and AUSPICES), the keepers of the Sibylline books (see SIBYL); the twenty Fetiales or state heralds, the supreme-advising, not executing --authorities on international law; the Vestal virgins, on whom devolved the guardianship of the Palladium and of the sacred fire; the Salii (see above), and others. Priests, in the stricter sense of the word, in the service of special deities, were the Flamens (q.v.); while the Dea Dia, the goddess of fields (Tellus, Ceres, Ops, Fiora), had the special brotherhood of the twelve Arvalian brothers, with their numerous followers. The state sacrifice, before the expulsion of the mythical kings supposed to have been offered up by these, was offered by a special rex sacrorum or rex sacrificutus.

The mode of worship was analogous to that of the Greeks. Votive offerings, prayers, Vows, sacrifices, libations, purifications, banquets, lays, songs, dances, and games made up the sum of their divine service. The sacred places were either fana, delubra-mere hallowed spots on hills and in groves-or templa, ades, special buildings dedicated to a special deity. The latter contained two altars-the ara, for libations and oblations; and the altare, for burnt offerings chiefly. Frugality, as it pervaded, in the classical period, the domestic life, so it also prevented all extravagance of offerings to the deity, and all excess of rejoicing before it. Sober and dull, as the Roman religion undoubtedly was-for it never once expanded into the joyful extravagances of fancy with which the Greek religion was fraught throughout-it at the same time kept free from the abominations that are the natural offspring of that unbounded sway of fancy. Human sacrifices, as far as they are to be met with, grew out of the idea of substitution, and were chiefly enthusiastic voluntary acts of men who threw themselves into the breach; or they carried out decrees of civil tribunals, who had convicted the “victim” of a deadly offense. In their dealings with the gods, the Romans were pure merchants, carrying out their promises with strict literalness, and thus often fraudulently, against the patent inner meaning of their promise; but the gods were not to them the all-pervading essences, but rather creditors, strict and powerful, yet unable to exact more than was agreed upon outwardly.

A code of moral and ethical rules, furthering and preserving civil order, and the pious relations within the state and family, were the palpable results of this religion, which, in its barrenness of metaphysical notions, did next to nothing for the furtherance of art.

And here we must enter somewhat more fully into that peculiar phenomenon of the utter dissimilarity in the characters of the Greek and Roman religion, at which we have hinted already-a dissimilarity all the more surprising, as the self-same symbolical and allegorical views of nature, filtered through however different channels, form the founda tion of both. Both also-especially in their later stages-offer a general analogy not only of deities and spirits, but even of holy places and their mode of worship. But the fact is that they each took the originally common stock of notions and conceptions, clad more or less in mythical garb, and utterly transformed it, superadding to it from time XII.-23a.

to time according to their own distinct nationality. It is here, however, that their characteristic traits come out in as forcible a contrast as they do in every other relation of life, in their art and culture, in their states and families. While to the Hellenes the individual was the chief end of all things, and the state existed for the citizen, and the ideal was the Kalokagathia, the beautiful, good, the Romans imposed, as the highest duty, submission to authority-the son to the father, the citizen to the ruler, and all to the gods. To them, only that which was useful appeared good. Idleness was not to be tolerated in a community where every single member only existed as far as it contributed to the greatness and aggrandizement of the commonwealth. Hence, with them, a rational thoughtfulness, and a grand and awful austerity in their relations to men and gods; while the Greeks treated both with joyful serenity. The Greek invested his gods with human attributes, and then surrounded them with a halo of highest splendor and most glorious divine beauty; but he constantly modeled and remodeled them, until they reached the acme of beautiful perfection, as would the painter and the sculptor with their work. The Roman, on the other hand, cared nothing for the outward form of his idealized notions-the notions themselves, mere fundamental ideas, were his sole object of veneration. The Greeks made everything concrete, corporeal, and individual; the Romans, abstract and general. The Greeks could only worship allegories; the Romans, abstractions. Hence, also, their utter discarding of many of the myths com mon to the whole Indo-Germanic stock, the unmarried and childless state of their gods, who, moreover, wanted no food, and did not wander about among men, as did the Indian and the Hellenic. As in the late Midrash, which has partly found its way into Christianity, there is a heavenly Jerusalem right over the earthly Jerusalem, in which all things below were reproduced in an exact but most ideal and divine manner. Thus, the Roman pantheon was the precise counterpart of the Roman world as it existed in reality. Every man, and thing, and event, and act had a corresponding tutelary diety, that came and went with the special individual, phenomenon, or event; and eternal gods were those only that represented certain great unchanging laws of nature. The angels of the legendary lore of later Judaism and early Christianity, that protect special nations, were with the Romans the gods of these nations, and entered, as their special numina, the divine commonwealth of the Romans simultaneously with the admission of these nations into their own pale or freedom.

As long as the grand old Roman simplicity of manners, the frugality of domestic life, the indefatigable pursuit of agriculture, trade, and commerce lasted-and all of these were well characterized by the deep reverence paid to gods (albeit not in the highest scale of divine order), who presided over the house, the field, the forest, mercantile enterprise, and the like, Vesta, the Penates, the Silvani, the Lares or Lases, Hercules or Her. culus (a native Italian deity, the god of the inclosed homestead [compare Jupiter herceus] apparently distinct from the Greek Heracles), as the god of property and gain, whose altar, as god of faith (Deus fidius), was as frequently to be met with as those of the goddess of chance (Fors, Fortuna), and the god of traffic (Mercury)—so long did Roman religion, properly so called, retain its firm hold over the people's minds, and its influence cannot well be overrated. But when the antique austerity, the olden spirit of grand independence, the unceasing hard work that steeled body and soul, had given way to the lazy luxurious ease of later times-then Roman religion ceased to exist in reality, and over its ruins rose a mad jumble of unbelief, Hellenism, sectarianism, and oriental creeds. The ancient religio, the binding faith, which had excited the admiration and astonishment of the Greeks, had waned, and in proportion with the unbelief rose the pomp, and stateliness, and luxury of public worship. To the hierarchy of augurs, oracle-keepers, and pontifices were superadded special banquet-masters for the divine banquets. The priests more and more freed themselves from taxes and other public burdens, and the custom of perpetual endowments for religious objects crept in, as their influence waxed stronger and stronger. "Pious services" became as much an item of domestic expenditure as cook's and nurse's wages. Penny collections for the "mother of God" were gathered on certain fixed days by the sound of fife and drum played by priests in oriental garb, headed by a eunuch, from house to house, and the whole substance of Roman faith was transformed into an unwieldly mass of dark, groveling mysticism and shameless profligracy, presided over by wretched gangs of uneducated and unprincipled priests. How this state of things favored the gradual introduction of Judaism and Christianity into the dying days of imperial Rome, has been briefly sketched in Gnostics (q.v.). Constantine the great abolished the last outward trace of Roman religion by proclaiming Christianity as the state religion. For the greater part of the gods and goddesses mentioned, see special articles. See also GREEK RELIGION, ETRURIA, PELASGIANS, etc. For a fuller account of the whole subject, the reader is referred to Mommsen's History of Rome (Eng. transl. Lond. 1864).

ROMANS, a t. of France, in the department of Drome, stands on the right bank of the Isère, 14 m. n.e. of Valence. A bridge, founded in the 9th c., connects Romans with the small town of Peage on the left bank of the river. Romans owes its origin to an important abbey, founded in the 9th c.. by St. Bernard, archbishop of Vienne, and by a nobleman named Romain, who gave his name to the town. Silk and woolen fabrics are largely manufactured, and a very active general trade is carried on. Pop. '72, 9,893; $1, 11,916.

ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE, in a doctrinal point of view, the most profound and elaborate composition of St. Paul. That it proceeded from the pen of the great apostle of the Gentiles has never been seriously doubted by any competent scholar. Much discussion has taken place regarding the composition of the church at Rome, and-connected therewith-the design or object of the epistle. Were the members of the church Jewish or Gentile Christians? The general opinion of commentators is that the church was a mixed congregation, the majority of members being probably of pure Gentile descent, and the minority Jewish Christians, who perhaps formed the original nucleus of the church. Dr. Jowett, in his Epistles of St. Paul to the Romans, Galatians, and Thessalonians, suggests that the phenomena of the text-for example, the frequent appeals to the authority of the "law" addressed to the Gentiles-may be best explained on the hypothesis that the apostle is speaking to a Gentile congregation which had passed through a phase of Jewish proselytism. The great value of the Epistle to the Romans consists in this, that it exhibits what may be called the rationale of Christianity. The immediate object of the apostle was probably nothing more than to prevent an outbreak in the church at Rome of those violent antipathies of religious sentiment which had shown themselves elsewhere (for instance, at Corinth), and had produced such disastrous consequences; but with a view to the more complete accomplishment of this object, he takes a broad ethical view of human nature, and finds all men-Jews and Gentiles alike -to be estranged from God, and in need of pardon and reconciliation. He does not underrate the advantages which his Jewish countrymen possessed-nay, he extols them; but he points out at the same time that the "oracles" or "law" could not make the Jews holy: they could only condemn them for being unholy. The Gentiles were declared guilty not less decisively by their own consciences-the law was plainly enough "writ ten in their hearts." Hence Paul's grand argument, that if men are to stand as “righteous" in the sight of God, it cannot be by their "works," but in virtue of a divine justification graciously vouchsafed to them, and received into their hearts by an act of faith. This leads him to unfold the purpose and significance of Christ's work, to dilate on the "freeness" of God's grace toward "sinners." He concludes by predicting the conver sion of his "kinsmen according to the flesh," exhorting the Gentiles to humility, charity, mutual forbearance, and the practice of all the Christian virtues. The epistle is believed to have been written from Corinth during Paul's third missionary journey, about 58 A.D. The commentaries upon it, or upon special chapters, are innumerable; and almost all the great doctrinal controversies that have agitated Christendom owe their origin to it.

ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE (ante), opens with affirming, 1. That the gospel is of divine authority, and had been promised in the Old Testament; 2. That in the person of Jesus Christ the divine and human natures are united; 3. That the righteousness of God by faith which is revealed in the gospel makes it the power of God unto salvation. I. This proposition begins the doctrinal part of the epistle, which shows, 1. That all men need God's way of salvation. (1.) The Gentiles, having sufficient light by nature to render them without excuse for transgression, manifest their depravity in flagrant vices. (2) The Jews pronounce their own condemnation when, doing the same things for which they condemn others, they boast in the law, which forbids sin, and in the Scriptures, which affirm the universal prevalence of transgression. Jews and Gentiles, therefore, being sinners, no man can be saved by the deeds of the law. 2. God offers all men salvation through the death of Christ. This provision had been foretold from the beginning, and even Abraham had been saved through faith in it. 3. The results of justification by faith are: peace with God, access into a state of grace, a joyful hope of glory, present joy even in tribulation as promoting growth of Christian character, and assurance that since the love of God had been exercised toward sinners in giving Christ to die for them, much more by his living again would the blessings of salvation be secured. These blessings are great and abounding, being, as coming through the righteousness of one man, analogous to the ruin which had come on mankind through the transgression of one man; yet far transcending that. 4. This grace to sinners does not tolerate sin, but insures its destruction in all who truly believe. The very profession of reliance on Christ is a promise to forsake sin; and the exercise of faith in him, is the beginning of a new life which is to be perfected in holiness. Yet sin does not die easily, or soon. conflict between the old nature and the new is waged, often with increasing strenuousness in proportion as the new grows strong, so that believers, if depending on themselves, would be in despair; but through Christ their deliverance is sure. 5. Therefore to true believers there are present manifold blessings: release from condemnation, spiritual life, adoption as children of God, joint heirship with Christ in all that belongs to God, even though as creatures they still continue, in common with others, subject to the vanity of the present life; yet they have the sure hope of being saved from it, and of their creature nature attaining the glorious liberty of God's children. In the mean time, the spirit of God dwelling in them helps their infirmities; all external things, they know, are so administered as to work together for good to them; and the love of God, which did not spare his own son, will triumph for them and in them over all actual and possible hos tile things. 6. To this doctrinal exhibition an objection of great apparent force is urged. The Jews, through whom historically the one way of salvation in the gospel has been manifested to men, are, as a nation, unbelievers in their own Messiah, and consequently,

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Rome.

are rejected of God. Paul admits the fact, declaring that he endured great and constant sorrow for them as his kinsmen according to the flesh whose case had once been his own when, in his ignorant unbelief, he used to imprecate on himself a curse from Christ; he recounts their ancient privileges and honors, yet declares that God's supreme purpose, itself a part of a universal plan, having from the beginning respect to a portion of the people, had been accomplished; that the rejection of the unbelieving portion will not be perpetual, because ultimately they shall become a believing people; and that, as through their unbelief salvation had gone out to the Gentiles, so, in the fullness of time, their faith and restoration will be to the world as life from the dead. II. The practical part of the epistle flows logically from the doctrinal exhibition.

ROMANSH or RUMONSH. See ROMANIC LANGUAGES.

ROMANS, KING OF THE, strictly the title of the prince elected during the lifetime of a German emperor to be his successor. The title expired with the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. Up to the time of the coronation of Otho I. by pope John XII. in 962, the German sovereigns called themselves kings of Germany, and also (though incorrectly) kings of the Romans. Joseph II. was the last to bear the title.

ROMANTIC SCHOOL, the name first assumed in Germany, about the beginning of the present century, by a number of young poets and critics, A. W. and Fr. Schlegel, Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, Wackenroder, etc., who wished to indicate by the designation that they sought the essence of art and poetry in the wonderful and fantastic-elements that pre-eminently characterized the Romance literature of the middle ages. Their efforts were directed to the overthrow of the artificial rhetoric and unimaginative pedantry of the French school of poetry, even then influential, and to the restoration of a belief in the mystery and wonder that envelop the existence of man-a belief that had been rudely assailed and mocked by the prevailing materialism in all departments of thought. Thus, their purpose was twofold-it was in part æsthetic, and in part relig ious. As poetical reformers, the Romantic school in Germany unquestionably exercised a most beneficial influence; but as religionists—though their aim was intrinsically high and noble-they more or less consciously subserved the designs of a reactionary govern ment, and so came to be hated and distrusted by the liberal politicians and thinkers of Germany.-See Eichendorff's Ueber die Ethische und Religiöse Bedeutung der Neuern Romantischen Poesie (Leip. 1847); H. Heine's Zur Geschichte der Neuern Schönen Literatur in Deutschland (Hamb. 1833); Hettner's Die Romantische Schule (1850); R. Haym's Die Romantische Schule (1870); and the Danish work of Brandes (1873).-Between twenty and thirty years later a similar school arose in France, and had a long struggle for supremacy with the older classic school. It was victorious, but not wise, and, except in a few instances-such as Lamartine and Victor Hugo-it has rushed into excesses of caprice both literary and moral, which have stamped it with a revolutionary rather than a reformatory character.-Seen Huber's Die Romantische Poesie in Frankreich (1832); Tenuet's Prosodie de l'École Moderne (1844); Gautier's Histoire du Romantisme (Par. 1874).

ROMAN WALL. Traces are found in Great Britain of four great walls built by the Roman conquerors. Two were built by Agricola, the first in A.D. 79, and the second in A.D. 81, extending from the frith of Forth to the frith of Clyde. As this proved insufficient to keep back the northern barbarians, Hadrian in A.D. 120 finished the most famous of all the walls, from the Solway to Newcastle on the Tyne. This was 68 English m. in length. In A.D. 209 Severus built another wall a few yards above that of Hadrian, which was guarded by 10,000 men.

ROME. The design of this article is to furnish the reader with a brief outline of the ETHNOLOGY and HISTORY of ancient Italy, in so far as these are not already discussed or described under particular heads, to which reference will be made. As the Roman state gradually conquered and incorporated with itself the other states and territories of the Italian peninsula, and as these (in general) figure separately in history only during the process of this subjugation, it will be most convenient to consider them here.

Ethnology.-In the earliest times we find in Italy five distinct races; three of which (IAPYGIANS, ETRUSCANS, and ITALIANS) may, in a restricted sense, be termed "native," inasmuch as we do not meet with them elsewhere; and two, GREEKS and GAULS, "foreign;" inasmuch as their chief settlements were not in Italy, but in Greece and Gallia. But, ethnologically, this distinction is arbitrary. There is no reason for believing that the first three races were indigenous, and the last two immigrant: the analysis of their languages, or of such fragments of their languages as survive, leads strongly to the conclusion that all were alike immigrant, and that in this respect the only difference between them is one of time.-1. The lapygians.-This race, monuments of which in a peculiar language (as yet undeciphered), have been found in the s.e. corner of Italy-the Messapian or Calabrian peninsula is in all probability the oldest.— 2. Etruscans.-The origin of this mysterious people is certainly one of the most interesting, if also one of the most insoluble problems in history. It is not, however, necessary to say anything about them here, as their history, character, and civilization are handled at length in the article ETRURIA.-3. Italians.-At what period the earliest immigrations into Italy of the so-called "Italian" races-the Latins and Umbro-Sabellians, took place, it is wholly impossible to tell; but it was undoubtedly long before the Etruscans had