24] This is, of course, only Livy's rhetoric, but it
represents the fundamental Roman idea of the public _auspicia_.

The passage is also useful because it alludes to the fact that the right
of taking the _auspicia_ belonged ultimately to the whole patrician body
of fully qualified citizens.[625] But so far as we can discern in the
dim light of the earliest period, this body entrusted the right and duty
to its chief magistrate, the Rex, exactly as it entrusted him with the
_imperium_, the supreme power of command in civil matters. Thus the
_auspicia_ and the _imperium_ were indissolubly connected; as Dr.
Greenidge says,[626] "they are the divine and human side of the same
power," and may be found together in a thousand passages in Roman
literature and inscriptions. But at the side of the Rex we find,
according to tradition, two helpers or advisers called _augures_, the
three together perhaps forming a _collegium_.[627] Now there was
certainly an important difference between the Rex and the augurs; the
latter were aiders and interpreters, but the Rex only was said _habere
auspicia_, just as the whole patrician body had this right, though they
delegated it to the Rex during his lifetime, and on his death received
it again. The man who "habet auspicia" has the right of _spectio_,
_i.e._ of taking the auspices in a particular case,[628] of watching the
sky or the conduct of the sacred fowls in eating; this right the augurs
never had. Their power was limited to guidance and interpretation. This
follows necessarily from the fundamental principle that the _auspicia_
and the _imperium_ were indissolubly connected; for the augur, of
course, never possessed the _imperium_ by virtue of his office. It is
true that of the augur in the regal period we know almost nothing; his
art, as we shall see directly, was kept strictly secret, and he was
bound by oath not to reveal it.[629] But we may safely argue back in
general terms from the relation of magistrate and augur under the later
Republic to the relation of augur and Rex, from whom descended the
magistrate's _imperium_. The one essential thing to remember is that _it
was in all periods the magistrate who was responsible_, under the
sanction and advice of his assistants the pontifices and augurs, for the
maintenance of the _pax deorum_. The lay element in the actual working
of the constitution never lost this prerogative. Rome was never
hierarchically governed.

It would be going be