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Updated: May 24, 2025
The Deus Vagitanus opened the lips of the new-born infant when it uttered its first cry; the Dea Ossipago made the growing child's bones stout and strong; the Deus Locutius made it speak clearly; the goddess Viriplaca restored harmony between husband and wife who had quarrelled; the Dea Orbona closed a man's eyes at death. These di indigites had shrines and received sacrifices.
And if, of a bygone religious system all that remains is in one place some fragments of mythology, and in another nothing but the mere names of the gods, then it is nothing astonishing if elsewhere all that we find is some fragment of worship, some rite, which continues to be practised, for its own sake, even though all memory of the gods in whose worship it originated has disappeared from the common consciousness a disappearance which would be the easier if the gods worshipped had acquired no names, or names as little personal as those of the di indigites.
So long and so far as the question is thus put and thus answered, there is little room for mythology to grow in. And it did not grow round the di indigites in Italy, or round corresponding deities in other countries. But the question, 'Why did the god do it? is susceptible, on reflection, of another kind of answer.
They were distinguished into gods and goddesses. Their names were proper names, though they are but words descriptive of the function which the deity performed or presided over. Yet though these di indigites are gods, personal gods, to whom prayer and sacrifice are offered, they have no mythology attached to them; no myths are told about them.
Like the di indigites of Italy, these vegetation-goddesses are addressed by names which, though performing the function of personal names and enabling the worshippers to make appeals to the deities personally, are still of perfectly transparent meaning.
In Mexico the vegetation-goddesses struggled for existence amongst a crowd of more developed deities, just as in Italy the di indigites competed, at a disadvantage, with the great gods of the state. In Australia the greater gods of the myths seem to have given way before or to the spread of totemism.
It may, perhaps, seem that the imagination of early man would from the first be set to work to invent myths in answer to the question, 'Why did the god do this thing? But, as a matter of fact, man can get on for a long time without mythology. A striking instance of this is afforded by the di indigites of Italy.
The Indigites were heroes who were ranked among the gods, and included particularly Hercules, Castor and Pollux, and Quirinus or Romulus. The Semones comprehended those deities that presided over particular objects, as Pan, the god of shepherds; Flora, the goddess of flowers, etc.
The fact thus forced on our notice by the di indigites of Rome should be enough to warn us that mythology does not of necessity spring up, as an immediate consequence of the worship of the gods. It may even suggest a reason why mythology must be a secondary, rather than a primary consequence of worship.
Having sought for the divine personality in all the external objects of the world around him in the end he learns, what was the truth from the beginning, that it is in his heart he has access to his God. The belief in gods does not of necessity result in a mythology. The instance of the di indigites of Italy is there to show that it is no inevitable result.
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