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But though Pompilius introduced so ample a ritual, yet did not Rome
see fit to be content with it. For as yet Jupiter himself had not his
chief temple, it being King Tarquin who built the Capitol. And
Æsculapius left Epidaurus for Rome, that in this foremost city he
might have a finer field for the exercise of his great medical skill.
The mother of the gods, too, came I know not whence from
Pessinuns; it being unseemly that, while her son presided on the
Capitoline hill, she herself should lie hid in obscurity. But if she
is the mother of all the gods, she not only followed some of her
children to Rome, but left others to follow her. I wonder, indeed,
if she were the mother of Cynocephalus, who a long while afterwards
came from Egypt. Whether also the goddess Fever was her offspring,
is a matter for her grandson Æsculapius to decide. But of whatever
breed she be, the foreign gods will not presume, I trust, to call a
goddess base-born who is a Roman citizen. Who can number the deities
to whom the guardianship of Rome was entrusted? Indigenous and
imported, both of heaven, earth, hell, seas, fountains, rivers;
and, as Varro says, gods certain and uncertain, male and female:
for, as among animals, so among all kinds of gods are there these
distinctions. Rome, then, enjoying the protection of such a cloud of
deities, might surely have been preserved from some of those great and
horrible calamities, of which I can mention but a few. For by the
great smoke of her altars she summoned to her protection, as by a
beacon-fire, a host of gods, for whom she appointed and maintained
temples, altars, sacrifices, priests, and thus offended the true and
most high God, to whom alone all this ceremonial is lawfully due.
And, indeed, she was more prosperous when she had fewer gods; but
the greater she became, the more gods she thought she should have, as
the larger ship needs to be manned by a larger crew. I suppose she
despaired of the smaller number, under whose protection she had spent
comparatively happy days, being able to defend her greatness. For
even under the kings (with the exception of Numa Pompilius, of whom
I have already spoken), how wicked a contentiousness must have
existed to occasion the death of Romulus' brother!
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