s worth quoting as suggesting that a _haruspex_
might give useful advice in spite of his art: "Hostia
quoque caesa consulenti (Fabio) deos haruspex, cavendum
a fraude hostili et ab insidiis, praedixit."

[649] They were not _sacerdotes publici Romani_, nor is
a _collegium_ mentioned till the reign of Claudius: Tac.
_Ann._ xi. 15. The proper term seems to have been
_ordo_, which occurs in inscriptions of the Empire:
Marq. p. 415.

[650] typo fixed: 54: See the oration _De haruspicum
responsis_ (especially 5. 9), the genuineness of which
is now generally acknowledged. Asconius quotes it as
Cicero's (ed. Clark, p. 70): so also Quintilian, v. 11.
42.

[651] Tac. _Ann._ 11. 15.

[652] The _haruspices_ mentioned in inscriptions (above,
note 56) were not the genuine article; they were Romans
and _equites_. Probably this was only one of the many
ways of finding dignity or employment for persons of
good birth under the Empire.

[653] _Cod. Theod._ xvi. 10. 1 (of the year 321 A.D.),
quoted by Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 475, note 1. In ix. 16. 3.
5, however, the practice of consulting such experts is
strictly prohibited.

[654] The story is told in Prof. Dill's _Roman Society
in the Last Century of the Western Empire_, ed. 1, p.
41.

LECTURE XIV

THE HANNIBALIC WAR

We have noticed two different, if not opposing, tendencies in Roman
religious experience since the disappearance of the kingship. First,
there was a tendency towards the reception of new and more emotional
forms of worship, under the direction of the Sibylline books and their
keepers; secondly, we have seen how, in the hands of pontifices and
augurs, religious practice became gradually so highly formularised and
secularised that the real religious instinct is hardly discernible in
it, except indeed in the degraded form of scruple as to the exact
performance of the ritual laid down. There was also, towards the end of
that period, a third tendency beginning to show itself, which was
eventually to complete the paralysis of the old religion--a tendency to
neglect and despise the old religious forms. This need not surprise us,
if we keep in mind two facts: (1) that Rome is now continually in close
contact with Greece and her life and thought; (2) that it seems to be
inevitable in western civilisation that a hard and fast system of
religious rule should eve