+665+. The Peruvian cult differs from the Mexican in that it recognizes, in its developed form, one preëminent deity, the sun-god, from whom issues all authority. Along with him stand two prominent figures, Viracocha and Pachacamac, who also are credited with great powers. Apparently they were local universal deities who were incorporated into the Peruvian system and subordinated to the sun-god. All three are only vague, general figures, having no histories except a few stories of origins, and the Peruvian myths do not differ in essential character from those of the Aztecs.[1122]
+666+. In this category we may include a large number of minutely specialized deities of the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. As among some lower tribes already referred to, so here many common objects and pursuits are regarded as being under the fostering care of specific deities. In Egypt the ripe ear of the grain, the birth of a child and its naming, and other things had their special divinities.[1123]
+667+. The Greeks had such divine patrons of the corncrib, beans, plowshare, cattle, city walls, banquets, potters, physicians, athletic contests, and even one hero known as the "frightener of horses" and a deity called the "flycatcher."[1124]
+668+. The Romans carried out this specialization in even greater detail. Almost every object and every event of the communal life had its patron deity: the house, the hearth, the field, the boundary stone, sowing and reaping, the wall, breath, marriage, education, death; the Lares were the special protectors of the house or of the field, and all patrons of the home were summed up under the general designations _dii penates_ and _dii familiares_. Most of these beings have proper names, but even where there are no such names, as in the case of the _dii penates_, there can be little doubt that they were looked on as personal individualized beings.[1125] The tendency was, as time went on, to add to the number of these specialized patrons, as appears from the Roman _indigitamenta_[1126] lists of such divine beings redacted by the priests, who were disposed, naturally, to make the objects of worship as numerous as possible; but herein they doubtless responded to a popular impulse.