ith the same surname (_nomen_,
not _cognomen_), the gentile _sacra_ are in the hands of the more
wealthy members who are regarded as its heads; we have the curious
instance of Clodius even after his adoption into another family,
providing for the worship of the _gens Clodia_ in his own house, and we
may remember Virgil's picture of the founders of the _gentes_ of the
Potitii and the Pinarii performing the sacrifice to Hercules at the
_ara maxima_, which was the traditional privilege of their houses.
When societies (_sodalitates_) are formed for religious purposes they
elect their own _magistri_ to be their religious representatives, as we
see in the case of the Salii and the Luperci. Finally, in the great
community of the state the king is priest, and with that exactness of
parallelism of which the Roman was so fond, he--like the _pater
familias_--leaves the worship of Vesta in the hands of his 'daughters,'
the Vestal virgins. And so, when the Republic is instituted, a special
official, the _rex sacrorum_, inherits the king's ritual duties, while
the superintendence of the Vestals passes to his representative in the
matter of religious law, the _pontifex maximus_, whose official
residence is always the _regia_, Numa's palace. The state is but the
enlarged household and the head of the state is its religious
representative.

If then the approach to the gods is so direct, where, it may be asked,
in the organisation of Roman religion is there room for the priest? Two
points about the Roman priesthood are of paramount importance. In the
first place, they are not a caste apart: though there were restrictions
as to the holding of secular magistracies in combination with the
priesthood--always observed strictly in the case of the _rex sacrorum_
and with few exceptions in the case of the greater _flamines_--yet the
_pontifices_ might always take their part in public life, and no kind
of barrier existed between them and the rest of the community: Iulius
Caesar himself was _pontifex maximus_. In the second place they are not
regarded as representatives of the gods or as mediators between god and
man, but simply as administrative officials appointed for the
performance of the acts of state-worship, just as the magistrates were
for its civil and military government. In origin they were chosen to
assist the king in the multifarious duties of the state-cult--the
_flamines_ were to act as special priests of particular deities, the
mo