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Dea Roma, the Idea of Rome, was an astral mold almost cast in higher than astral stuff: it was so firmly fixed, so unalterably there, that I cannot imagine a few centuries of peasant-bandits building it, unimaginative tough creatures at the best. No; it was a heritage; it was built in thousands of years, and founded upon forgotten facts.
I think we may recognise in all this the hand of a wise old Pompilius from the Sabine hills, at work to keep the life of his Romans, peasant-bandits as they were, clean in the main and sound. Yes, there were gross elements: among the many recurring festivals, some were gross and saturnalian enough.
What we may call the exoteric basis of Numaism was a ritual of many ceremonies connected with home-life and agriculture, and designed to keep alive a feeling for the sacredness of these. It was calculated for its cycle: you could have given no high metaphysical system to peasant-bandits of that type; you could not take the Upanishads to Afghans or Abyssinians today.
And then, too, an instinct among those peasant-bandits for empire: an instinct that few European peoples have possessed; that it took the English, for example, a much longer time to learn than it took the Romans. For let us note that even in those early days it was not such a bad thing to come under Roman sway; if you took it quietly, and were misled by no patriotic notions. That is, as a rule.
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