ood, and here we have the source
of the power of the pontiffs in the Roman state. The pontiffs not only
preserved the sacred traditions and customs but they also added to them by
interpretation and the establishment of new precedents. The pontiffs
themselves performed or supervised the performance of all public acts of a
purely religious nature, and likewise prescribed the ritual to be observed
by the magistrate in initiating public acts.

On the other hand the power of the augurs rested upon the belief that the
gods issued their warnings to men through natural signs, and that it was
possible to discover the attitude of the gods towards any contemplated
human action by the observation of natural phenomena. For the augurs were
the guardians of the science of the interpretation of such signs or
auspices in so far as the state was concerned. The magistrate initiating
any important public act had to take the auspices, and if the augurs
declared any flaw therein or held that any unfavorable omen had occurred
during the performance of the said act, they could suspend the
magistrate's action or render it invalid.

So we see that the Roman priests were not intermediaries between the
individual Roman and his gods, but rather, as has been pointed out before,
officers in charge of one branch of the public administration. They were
responsible for the due observance of the public religious acts, just as
the head of the household supervised the performance of the family cult.

*The cult of the household.* It is in the cult of the household that we
can best see the true Roman religious ideas. The chief divinities of the
household were: Janus, the spirit of the doorway; Vesta, the spirit of the
fire on the hearth; the Penates, the guardian spirits of the
store-chamber; the Lar Familiaris, which we may perhaps regard as the
spirit of the cultivated land; and the Genius of the head of the house,
originally, it is probable, the spirit of his generative powers, which
became symbolic of the life of the family as a whole.

The Romans, strictly speaking, did not practice ancestor-worship. But they
believed that the spirits of the departed were affected by the
ministrations of the living, and, in case these were omitted, might
exercise a baneful influence upon the fortunes of their descendants. Hence
came the obligation to remember the dead with offerings at stated times in
the year.

*The cult of the fields.* As early Rome was essentiall