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Updated: June 27, 2025
So far we have been considering the regular relations of man and god, seen in recurring or special offerings, in vows and in acts of purification and lustration all based on the contract-notion, all endeavours on man's part to fulfil his bounden duty, that the gods may be constrained in turn to theirs.
Devotion, piety in our sense of the term and a feeling of the divine presence could not be enjoined or even encouraged by the strictly legal conception on which religion was based: the 'contract-notion' required not a 'right spirit' but right performance.
In this notion we have the secret of Rome's readiness under stress of circumstances, when all appeals to the old gods have failed, to adopt foreign deities and cults in the hope of a greater measure of success. The contract-notion may perhaps appear more clearly if we consider one or two of the normal religious acts of the Roman individual or state.
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