In Roman religion, the genius is the individual instance of a general divine nature, present in every individual person, place, or thing. Much like a guardian angel, the genius would follow each man from the hour of his birth until the day he died. For women, it was the Juno spirit; each individual place so did powerful objects, such as volcanoes. The concept extended to some specifics: the genius of the theatre, of vineyards, of festivals, which made performances successful, grapes grow, celebrations succeed, respectively, it was important in the Roman mind to propitiate the appropriate genii for the major undertakings and events of their lives. The Christian theologian Augustine equated the Christian "soul" with the Roman genius, citing Varro as attributing the rational powers and abilities of every human being to their genius. Although the term genius might apply to any divinity whatsoever, most of the higher-level and state genii had their own well-established names. Genius applied most to individual places or people not known.

Houses, gates, districts, each one had its own genius. The supreme hierarchy of the Roman gods, like that of the Greeks, was modelled after a human family, it featured a father, the supreme divine unity, a mother, queen of the gods. These supreme unities were subdivided into genii for each individual family; the male function was a Jupiter. The juno was worshipped under many titles: Iugalis, "of marriage" Matronalis, "of married women" Pronuba, "of brides" Virginalis, "of virginity"Genii were viewed as protective spirits, as one would propitiate them for protection. For example, to protect infants one propitiated a number of deities concerned with birth and childrearing: Cuba and Rumina. If those genii did not perform their proper function well, the infant would be in danger. Hundreds of lararia, or family shrines, have been discovered at Pompeii off the atrium, kitchen or garden, where the smoke of burnt offerings could vent through the opening in the roof; each lararium features a panel fresco containing the same theme: two peripheral figures attend on a central figure or two figures who may or may not be at an altar.

In the foreground is one or two serpents crawling toward the genius through a meadow motif. Campania and Calabria preserved an ancient practice of keeping a propitious house snake, here linked with the genius. In another, unrelated fresco the snake-in-meadow appears below a depiction of Mount Vesuvius and is labelled Agathodaimon, "good daimon", where daimon must be regarded as the Greek equivalent of genius; the English term is loaned from Lat. genius m. "household guardian spirit". The genius appears explicitly in Roman literature as early as Plautus, where one character jests that the father of another is so avaricious that he uses cheap Samian ware in sacrifices to his own genius, so as not to tempt the genius to steal it. In this passage, the genius is not identical to the person, as to propitiate oneself would be absurd, yet the genius has the avarice of the person. Horace, writing when the first emperor was introducing the cult of his own genius, describes the genius as "the companion which controls the natal star.

Octavius Caesar on return to Rome after the final victory of the Roman Civil War at the Battle of Actium appeared to the Senate to be a man of great power and success a mark of divinity. In recognition of the prodigy they voted. In concession to this sentiment he chose the name Augustus, capturing the numinous meaning of English "august." The household cult of the Genius Augusti dates from this period. It was propitiated at every meal along with the other household numina, thus began the tradition of the Imperial cult, in which Romans worshipped the genius of the emperor rather than the person. If the genius of the imperator, or commander of all troops, was to be propitiated, so was that of all the units under his command; the provincial troops expanded the idea of the genii of state. Inscriptional dedications to genius were not confined to the military. From Gallia Cisalpina under the empire are numerous dedications to the genii of persons of authority and respect. Sometimes the dedication is combined with other words, such as "to the genius and honor" or in the case of couples, "to the genius and Juno."Surviving from the time of the empire hundreds of dedicatory and sepulchral inscriptions ranging over the entire territory testify to a floruit of genius worship as an official cult.

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Splitting Image is a 2 issue comic-book limited series created in 1993 by Don Simpson and published by Image Comics. It satirizes the founders of Image and their initial titles such as Savage Dragon, Youngblood, WildC. A. T.s: Covert Action Teams, Cyber Force, Shadowhawk and Pitt. Issue #2 ends with a cliffhanger ending featuring Megaton Man, Captain Everything from normalman, Mr. Spook from Tales of the Beanworld, continued in the Megaton Man/normalman Special. In 2017, to celebrate the publisher's 25th anniversary, Image released an 80-Giant Special collecting both issues of Splitting Image along with the Normalman/Megaton Man special and supplementary material. Splitting Image @ comicbookdb Summary of issue #1 Summary of issue #2