À tous égards, la piété passait par des transferts de biens matériels à la divinité, mais c’était une piété intéressée dont la contrepartie était une meilleure fortune collective. On donnait pour recevoir plus. Dans notre langage, le sacrifice antique porte un nom : c’est un investissement.

In its extreme inhumanity this doctrine must above all have had one consequence for the life of a generation which surrendered to its magnificent consistency. That was a feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness of the single individual.16 In what was for the man of the age of the Reformation the most important thing in life, his eternal salvation,

There are a few glimpses of this in the story of Romulus. As well as dedicating the Temple of Jupiter Stator, he consulted the gods in deciding where exactly to found the new city: it was partly a disagreement about how to interpret the divine signs, observed in the flight of some birds, that led to the fatal quarrel between Romulus and Remus. But