taking visible shape in
this way, even Horace's famous lines seem cold to me (_Od._ ii. 6. 1):

delicta maiorum immeritus lues
Romane, donec templa refeceris
aedesque labentis deorum et
foeda nigro simulacra fumo.

The restoration of the temple buildings implies also a revival of the
old ritual, the _cura et caerimonia_. As to this we are very imperfectly
informed,--we have no correspondence of this age, as of the last, and
the details of life in the Augustan city are not preserved in abundance.
But Ovid comes to the rescue here, as in secular matters, and on the
whole the evidence in his _Fasti_ suggests that the old sacrificing
priesthoods, the Rex and the flamines, were set to their work again. He
tells us, for example, how he himself, as he was returning to Rome from
Nomentum,[916] had seen the flamen Quirinalis carrying out the _exta_ of
a dog and a sheep which had been sacrificed in the morning in the city,
to be laid on the altar in the grove of Robigus. In spite of all its
disabling restrictions, it was possible once more to fill the ancient
priesthood of Jupiter; and of the Rex sacrorum and the other flamines we
hear in the early Empire.[917] They were in the _potestas_ of the
pontifex maximus, and as after 12 B.C. that position was always held by
the Princeps himself, it was not likely that they would be allowed to
neglect their duties. Other ancient colleges were also revived or
confirmed by the inclusion of the Emperor himself among their members (a
fact which Augustus was careful to record in his own words), _e.g._ the
Fetiales, of whom he had made use when declaring war with Antony and
Cleopatra;[918] the Sodales Titienses, an institution of which we have
lost the origin and meaning; the Salii, Luperci, and above all the
Fratres Arvales, the brotherhood whose duty it had once been to lead a
procession round the crops in May, and so to ensure the _pax deorum_ for
the most vital material of human subsistence. The corn-supply now came
almost entirely from Africa and Egypt; the inner meaning of this old
ritual could not be revived, and we must own that all this restoration
of the old _caerimonia_ must have appealed rather to the eye than the
mind of the beholder. It was necessary to put some new element into it
to give it life. Here we come upon a most important fact in the work of
Augustus, which will become apparent if we take a rapid glance at the
work and history of the Fratres, and then g