own interest should
provide for the faithful transmission of that knowledge. These
close corporations supplying their own vacancies, of course from
the ranks of the burgesses, became in this way the depositaries of
skilled arts and sciences.

Augurs--Pontifices

Under the Roman constitution and that of the Latin communities in
general there were originally but two such colleges; that of the
augurs and that of the Pontifices.(11)

The six "bird-carriers" (-augures-) were skilled in interpreting
the language of the gods from the flight of birds; an art which was
prosecuted with great earnestness and reduced to a quasi-scientific
system. The six "bridge-builders" (-Pontifices-) derived their
name from their function, as sacred as it was politically important,
of conducting the building and demolition of the bridge over the
Tiber. They were the Roman engineers, who understood the mystery
of measures and numbers; whence there devolved upon them also the
duty of managing the calendar of the state, of proclaiming to the
people the time of new and full moon and the days of festivals, and
of seeing that every religious and every judicial act took place
on the right day. As they had thus an especial supervision of all
religious observances, it was to them in case of need--on occasion
of marriage, testament, and -adrogatio- --that the preliminary
question was addressed, whether the business proposed did not in
any respect offend against divine law; and it was they who fixed
and promulgated the general exoteric precepts of ritual, which
were known under the name of the "royal laws." Thus they acquired
(although not probably to the full extent till after the abolition
of the monarchy) the general oversight of Roman worship and of
whatever was connected with it--and what was there that was not so
connected? They themselves described the sum of their knowledge
as "the science of things divine and human." In fact the rudiments
of spiritual and temporal jurisprudence as well as of historical
recording proceeded from this college. For all writing of history
was associated with the calendar and the book of annals; and, as
from the organization of the Roman courts of law no tradition could
originate in these courts themselves, it was necessary that the
knowledge of legal principles and procedure should be traditionally
preserved in the college of the Pontifices, which alone was competent
to give an opinion respecting court-