HISTORY.
History of the Roman Religion. By W. R. Halliday. (Liverpool University Press and Hodder and Stoughton. 5s. net.)
Professor Halliday's contribution to a new series of mono- graphs produced by the Liverpool Institute of Archaeology is an admirably clear and scholarly account of the religion of Ancient Rome up to the reign of Augustus. We know no better sketch in English of the development of the Roman State religion from the time of Numa, with the gradual introduction first of Greek and then of Oriental cults as the power of Rome spread over the whole of the Mediterranean world. The simple religions of the home and the farm were older than Numa and existed side by side with the State religion; until they were superseded by Christianity. The State religion seems to us a chilly faith, dependent mainly on ritual performed by officials, but the Roman family cult, similar in some ways to that of China, must, as Professor Halliday says, have had a beneficial influence on the Roman character. It is to be noted that the stern Roman of the early Republic had no belief in personal immortality, and that the object of family worship—Janus, the Genius, the Lar of the Family, Vesta and the Periates—were not " originally invested with any corporeal form or thought of as individual personalities." Augustus achieved some success in his religious revival by linking his tutelary Genius with the old rustic Lares as the common objects of a popular cult based on ancient traditions.
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