Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/761

743 temples (which, served also as king's palaces) were in early times the sole permanent and finished buildings (the rest being of wood or of sun-dried clay) it is inferable that this great division of science, first employed in the orientation and laying out of them, took its earliest steps in the service of religion. Returning now from this parenthesis to the subject of Greek science, we find that development of it can be but in very small measure ascribed to the priesthood. From Curtius we learn that "the localities of the oracles became places where knowledge of various kinds was collected, such as could not be met with elsewhere," and that "the Greek calendar fell under the superintendence of Delphi," and also that "the art of road-making and of building bridges took its first origin from the national sanctuaries, especially from those of Apollo:" some culture of science being thus implied. But, practically, the scientific advances made by the Greeks were not of sacred but of secular origin. So, too, was it with their philosophy. Though Mahaffy thinks "we have no reason to doubt the fact that philosophers were called in professionally to minister in cases of grief," and though in ministering they assumed a function characteristic of priests, yet we can not assume that they acted in a religious capacity. Evidently in the main their speculations took their departure not from theological dogmas but from the facts which scientific observation had elsewhere established. Before there was time for an indigenous development of science and philosophy out of priestly culture, there was an intrusion of that science and philosophy which priestly culture had developed elsewhere.

The normal course of evolution having been in Rome, still more than in Greece, interrupted by intruding elements, an unbroken genealogy of science and philosophy is still less to be looked for. But it seems as though the naturalness of the connection between priestly culture and scientific knowledge led to a re-genesis of it. Mommsen, after stating that there were originally only two "colleges of sacred lore"—the augurs and the pontifices, says:—

"The five '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 duties of managing the Calendar of the State, of proclaiming to the people the time of the 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. . . thus they acquired. . . the general oversight of Roman worship and of whatever was connected with it—and what was there that was not so connected?. . . In fact the rudiments of spiritual and temporal jurisprudence as well as of historical composition proceeded from this college."