We have come back, then, to the problem from which we set out at the beginning of our enquiry—the relation of the religion, indeed of the culture of early Rome in general, to that of early Italy. But there is this difference; we are now in a position to grasp the problem more distinctly and, in part at least, to answer it.

We have already seen, that the conception of a religion of primitive Italy, or even of single primitive Italian deities, could not stand before a closer examination. A community of religious ideas among the peoples of Italy is only present from the moment when the Umbro-Sabellian people migrated into Italy. But the immigration was not restricted to this one stream. At about the same time, that is to say, about the tenth century B.C., the Illyrian peoples of Italy took up their abode there; we have already succeeded in observing how they took part in the formation of linguistic factors that are common Italian property. At about the same time appear the Etruscans and then, at about 800 B.C., the Greeks on the peninsula. And here we reach an import ant result. As soon as the first signs of a general Italian development appear, so soon must we reckon, in principle at least, with the possibility of contacts having been established with the Greek world and with the Etruscans.

To reach a 'national' Italian culture, free from all Greek elements, seems, then, to be a prospectless endeavor. Rather we may say that the Greek element does not merely appear very early in Italy, but that it may be marked as one of the elements that went to constitute Italian culture. 'Italian' and 'Greek', then, are not mutually exclusive conceptions, in the sense in which we use them to-day. At the very beginning of Italian history is revealed a peculiarity which continues to be noticeable along the later course of development; the apparently foreign world of Greece has the power to awaken in the people, by which it is received, the slumbering national forces, and liberate them for the formation of a culture, which takes its form from the inter-penetration of native and adopted (i.e. Greek) elements.

How little Greek borrowings were regarded as essentially opposite to the native element, our previous investigations may already avail to show. We shall not be mistaken if we assume that the Greek deities, who came to the Romans through Oscan or Etruscan mediation, appeared to them at first as purely Italian. Definitely in favor of this view is the fact that they all without exception bear Italian names and actually retained them. They were not felt to be foreign any more than any other deities, who came to Rome at the same time or later. To experience the Greek element as specifically distinct in origin or meaning lay far from men's thoughts. . .