High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In ancient Roman religion, birth and childhood deities were thought to care for every aspect of conception, pregnancy, parturition, and infant development. Some major deities of Roman religion had a specialized function they contributed to this sphere of human life, while other deities are known only by the name with which they were invoked to promote or avert a particular action. Several of these slight "divinities of the moment" are mentioned in surviving texts only by Christian polemicists.