Horace may entertain a well-bred skepticism of Jupiter's thunderbolt,
and he may pass the jest on the indifference of the Epicurean gods to
the affairs of men. When he does so, it is with the gods of mythology
and literature he is dealing, not with really religious gods. For the
old-fashioned faith of the country he entertains only the kindliest
regard. The images that rise in his mind at the mention of religion pure
and undefiled are not the gaudy spectacles to be seen in the marbled
streets of the capital. They are images of incense rising in autumn from
the ancient altar on the home-stead, of the feast of the Terminalia with
its slain lamb, of libations of ruddy wine and offerings of bright
flowers on the clear waters of some ancestral spring, of the simple
hearth of the farmhouse, of the family table resplendent with the silver
_salinum_, heirloom of generations, from which the grave paterfamilias
makes the pious offering of crackling salt and meal to little gods
crowned with rosemary and myrtle, of the altar beneath the pine to the
Virgin goddess, of Faunus the shepherd-god, in the humor of wooing,
roaming the sunny farmfields in quest of retreating wood-nymphs, of
Priapus the garden-god, and Silvanus, guardian of boundaries, and, most
of all, and typifying all, of the faith of rustic Phidyle, with clean
hands and a pure heart raising palms to heaven at the new of the moon,
and praying for the full-hanging vine, thrifty fields of corn, and
unblemished lambs. Of the religious life represented by these, Horace is
no more tempted to make light than he is tempted to delineate the
Italian rustic as De Maupassant does the French,--as an amusing animal,
with just enough of the human in his composition to make him ludicrous.


_iv_. THE INTERPRETER OF THE POPULAR
WISDOM