the introduction of foreign deities and showy
ceremonies of a character quite strange to the old religion. But there
was another process going on at the same time. The authorities of that
old religion were full of vigour in this same period; it may even be
said, that as far as we can trace their activity in the dim light of
those early days, they made themselves almost supreme in the State. And
the result was, in brief, that religion became more and more a matter of
State administration, and thereby lost its chance of developing the
conscience of the individual. It is indeed quite possible, as has
recently been maintained,[556] that it stood actively in the way of such
development. I have no doubt that there was a germ of conscience, of
moral feeling, in the _religio_ of old days--the feeling of anxiety and
doubt which originally suggested the _cura_ and _caerimonia_ of the
State; but the efforts of the authorities in this period were spent in
gradually destroying that germ. True, they did not interfere with the
simple religion of the family, which had its value all through Roman
history; but the attitude of the individual towards public worship will
react on his attitude towards private worship, which may also have lost
some part of its vitality in this period.

The religious authorities of which I speak are of course the two great
colleges of pontifices and augurs. Of the latter, and of the system of
divination of which they held the secrets, I will speak in the next
lecture. Here we have to do with the pontifices and their work in this
period, a thorny and somewhat technical subject, but a most important
one for the history of Roman religious experience.

I have so far assumed that this college existed in the age of the kings,
and assisted the Rex in the administration of the _ius divinum_. It is
legitimate to do this, but as a matter of fact we do not know for
certain what was the origin of the college itself, or of its mysterious
name. In the period we have now reached we come, however, upon a
striking fact, which is luckily easy to interpret; the king's house, the
_Regia_, has become the office of the head of the college, the pontifex
maximus, and also the meeting-place of the college for business.[557]
Obviously this head, whether or no he existed during the kingly period,
has stepped into the place of the Rex in the control of the _ius
divinum_. Again, we know that in the third century B.C., when written
histo