The names of nearly one hundred divinities have been
preserved, and fresh are being discovered almost yearly;
but most of them were of purely local importance, often
indeed mere variations of some town, mountain or river
name in the district ; and only in three or four cases does
their worship seem to have extended over more than a
few miles of territory. The widespread cult of local
martyrs, in which the bones of some believer who was
supposed to have perished in the persecutions of Decius
or Diocletian were laid up beneath the altar of the
village shrine, is a revival of the same spirit.
It is usually assumed that Roman worships were
readily and completely adopted, but like most generaliza-
tions about Spain, this applies mainly to Bastica and the
east coast. One of the features of Spanish religion under
the empire is the scarcity of dedications to Roman

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Evidence as to Native Worships 109

deities outside Colonies, or townships where Italian
soldiers or officials were settled, and where such wor-
ships were looked on as marks of religious loyalism.
Municipalities where Spaniards predominated preferred
to retain their old protectors under some neutral title,
as 'the genius of the town,'-"- the 'guardian god'
{deics tutela),^ local lares or nymphs ; or again, under
some hybrid Romano-Spanish designation, as Proserpina
Atsecina, Mars Cariocecus, Jupiter Ladicus. They
would, however, throw themselves heartily into emperor
worship, looking on Csesar,as an incarnation of the
power of the empire ; while their distance from the court
threw a veil over the less exalted qualities which made
such a cult in and round Rome somewhat perfunctory.
