1907), p.
59 foll., where the views of Mommsen, Boissier,
Marquardt, and Wissowa are discussed. Axtell's own
conclusion is given on p. 62 foll. In the main it seems
to agree with that hazarded in my _Roman Festivals_, p.
190.

[591] For the evidence as to the contents of the
_commentarii_, which are now generally identified with
the _libri_, see Wissowa, _R.K._ 32 and 441; Schanz,
_op. cit._ i. 32; and the article "Commentarii" in
Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ As Wissowa remarks (p.
441, note 6), we are greatly in need of a complete
collection of all fragments of these archives.

[592] See above, p. 159 foll. The conviction that these
lists are of comparatively late and priestly origin,
which has long been growing on me, was originally
suggested by the learned article "Indigitamenta" by R.
Peter in Roscher's _Lexicon_, vol. ii. p. 175 foll.

[593] I have here adopted some sentences from my article
in the _Hibbert Journal_ for 1907, p. 854.

LECTURE XIII

THE AUGURS AND THE ART OF DIVINATION

"The one great corruption to which all religion is exposed is its
separation from morality. The very strength of the religious motive has
a tendency to exclude, or disparage, all other tendencies of the human
mind, even the noblest and best. It is against this corruption that the
prophetic order from first to last constantly protested.... Mercy and
justice, judgment and truth, repentance and goodness--not sacrifice, not
fasting, not ablutions,--is the burden of the whole prophetic teaching
of the Old Testament."[594]

The over-formalising, or ritualising, of any religion is sure to bring
about that result against which the Jewish prophets protested. We saw at
the end of the last lecture how the pontifices contributed to such a
result. We are now to study the contribution of the other great college,
the augurs. For instead of developing, as did the wise man or seer of
Israel, into the mouthpiece of God in His demand for the righteousness
of man, the Roman diviner merely assisted the pontifex in his work of
robbing religion of the idea of righteousness. Divination seems to be a
universal instinct of human nature, a perfectly natural instinct,
arising out of man's daily needs, hopes, fears; but though it may have
had the chance, even at Rome, it never has been able, except among the
Jews, to emerge from its cramping chrysalis of magic and bec