Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

vm] Genius of the Group 303
indulgere genio, to live ascetically is defraudare genium. But
though each man had his individual genius, his life-spirit, the
genius is essentially of the group ; it is as it were incarnate in the
Fig. 82.
father of the family 1 or in the emperor as head of the state.
Every department of social life, every curia, every vicus, every
pagus had its genius, its utterance of a common life ; not only
the city of Rome had its Genius Urbis Romae but the whole
Roman people had its Genius Publicus Popidi Roivani 2 .
1 For the family as representing an economic unit and as contrasted with the
(/ens which is a kinship unit, see Mr Warde Fowler's most interesting account in
his Religious Experience of the Roman People, 1911, p. 70.
2 This point is well brought out in the article s.v. Genius in Daremberg and
Saglio's Dictionmtire des Antiquites, ' il (le genius) etait une divinite toute trouvee
pour les collectivites de tout ordre.'