Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/198

178 of the god should regularly consult such men of skill, and listen to their advice; and thence arose the corporations or colleges of men specially skilled in religious lore, a thoroughly national Italian institution, which had a far more important influence on political development than the individual priests or priesthoods. These colleges have been often, but erroneously, confounded with the priesthoods. The priesthoods were charged with the worship of a specific divinity; the skilled colleges, on the other hand, were charged with the preservation of traditional rules regarding those more general religious observances, the proper fulfilment of which implied a certain amount of information, and rendered it necessary for the state in its own interest to provide for the faithful transmission of that information. 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. 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. The six augurs 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 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