ity,[574] whose
reputation remained for ages as one who was ready with wise counsel in
matters both public and private. Coupling him with two other memorable
holders of the office, he says that "et in senatu et apud populum et in
causis amicorum et domi et militiae consilium suum fidemque
praestabant."[575] This passage should be remembered as a valuable
illustration of the way in which the college and its head were becoming
more and more occupied with secular business; it is worth noting, too,
that this great man was himself consul in the year 280, and took a
useful part in the first campaign against Pyrrhus.[576] Yet Cicero makes
it plain that he looked on him also as a great figure in religious
matters--nay, even as a man whom the gods loved.[577]

I will finish this lecture by illustrating briefly this renewed and
extended activity of the pontifices, so far as we can dimly trace it in
this third century B.C. Most of it is connected more or less directly
with the State religion, yet with a tendency to become more and more
secular and perfunctory; the word _cura_ would express it better than
_caerimonia_, and _caerimonia_ better than _religio_. The care of the
calendar, for example (a technical matter which lies outside my province
in these lectures), was originally of religious importance, because the
oldest religious festivals marked operations of husbandry, and these,
when fixed in the calendar, must occur at the right seasons.[578] It was
the duty of the pontifices so to adjust the necessary intercalations as
to effect this object--a duty to which they were, as it turned out,
quite unequal. But continued city life broke the connection between the
festivals and the agricultural work to which they originally
corresponded, and what was once a _cura_ of religious import became a
secular matter of which the value was not appreciated. So too with
another duty, for which both the Romans and ourselves have more reason
to be grateful to them--the recording of the leading events of national
history.

It is uncertain what prompted the college, or rather its head, to begin
making these records, though there is no doubt about the fact. But it
would be natural enough that those who had charge of the calendar, which
would necessitate some record of years for purposes of intercalation,
should go on to mark the names of the consuls and such striking events
as would make a year memorable. In any case this was what actually
happen