yond the scope of these lectures if I were to plunge
at this point into the thorny question of the exact relation between
magistrate and augur in respect of details. Nor do I propose to go into
the minutiae of augural lore, which are not instructive, like those of
sacrifice, for our survey of Roman religious experience. It will be
sufficient to state in outline what I believe to be necessary for our
purpose.[630] The person who had the _auspicia_, _i.e._ originally the
Rex, like the later magistrate, had to watch for signs from heaven; in
order to do so he marked out a _templum_, a rectangular space, by noting
certain objects, trees or what not, beyond which, whether he looked at
earth or sky, he need take no notice of what he saw. The spot where he
took up his position for this purpose was itself a rectangular
space,[631] marked out on a similar principle; in each case the space
was _liberatus effatus_, _i.e._ freed from previous associations by a
form of words, and ready, if need were (as in the case of _loca sacra_)
to be further handed over to the deities as their property; this
consecration, however, did not, of course, follow in the ordinary
procedure of the _auspicia_. In the _urbana auspicia_ all _loca effata_
must be within the sacred boundary of the _pomoerium_. Within this the
magistrate watched in silence at the dead of night for such signs as he
especially asked for (_auspicia impetrativa_); those which offered
themselves without such specification (_oblativa_) he was not bound to
take cognisance of unless some one claimed his attention for them. The
signs were originally in the regal period, if we may guess from the word
_auspicium_, only such as birds supplied, and the space in which they
were watched for was not complicated by the divisions of the later
augural art.[632] The business of the augur was, we may suppose, to see
that the details were carried out correctly, and to interpret the signs;
but those signs were not sent to _him_, for he was not the actual
representative of the State in this ritual.

If the constitutional position and duty of the augurs have now been made
sufficiently clear, I may go on to explain briefly, as in the case of
the pontifices, how the office became gradually secularised, and the
duty formalised, so that if there ever had been anything of a really
religious character in this art, any genuine belief in the manifestation
by the Power of his will in matters of State life, suc