An early example of collaboration

From Augustine:

They [the Romans] decided that responsibility for the land should not be entrusted to any one god; they put the goddess Rusina in charge of the rural countryside; they consigned the mountain ranges to the care of the god Jugatinus; the hills to the goddess Collatina, the valleys to Vallonia.

They could not even find the goddess called Segetia adequate on her own, to the responsibility for the crops from start to finish. Instead, they decided that the corn when sown should have the goddess Seia to watch over it as long as the seeds were underground;

as soon as the shoots came above the ground and began to form the grain, they were under the charge of the goddess Segetia;

but when the corn had been reaped and stored the goddess Tutilina was set over them to keep them safe.

Would not anyone think that Segetia should have been competent to supervise the whole process from the first green shoots to the dry ears of corn?

But that was not enough for men who loved a multitude of gods -- and so much so that their miserable soul disdained the pure embrace of the one true God and prostituted itself to a mob of demons ...

Logos2Go

Augustine, City of God, Book IV, Section 8. Translated by Henry Bettenson (Penguin, 1984), 143-144