These were not the superstitions of the populace; the republic supported six augurs charged with predicting the future. It carefully preserved a collection of prophecies, the Sibylline Books. It had sacred chickens guarded by priests. No public act--assembly, election, deliberation--could be done without the taking of the auspices, that is to say, observation of the flight of birds. In the year 195 it was learned that lightning had struck a temple of Jupiter and that it had hit a hair on the head of the statue of Hercules; a governor wrote that a chicken with three feet had been hatched; the senate assembled to discuss these portents. =The Priests.=--The priest in Rome, as in Greece, is not charged with the care of souls, he exists only for the service of the god. He guards his temple, administers his property, and performs the ceremonies in his honor. Thus the guild of the Salii (the leapers) watches over a shield which fell from heaven, they said, and which was adored as an idol; every year they perform a dance in arms, and this is their sole function. The augurs predict the future. The pontiffs superintend the ceremonies of worship; they regulate the calendar and fix the festivals to be celebrated on the various days of the year. Neither the priests, the augurs, nor the pontiffs form a separate class. They are chosen from among the great families and continue to exercise all the functions of state--judging, presiding over assemblies, and commanding armies. This is the reason that the Roman priests, potent as they were, did not constitute, as in Egypt, a sacerdotal caste. At Rome it was a state religion, but not a government by the priests. =The Dead.=--The Romans, like the Hindoos and the Greeks, believed that the soul survived the body. If care were taken to bury the body according to the proper rites, the soul went to the lower world and became a god; otherwise the soul could not enter the abode of the dead, but returned to the earth terrifying the living and tormenting them until suitable burial was performed. Pliny the Younger[113] relates the story of a ghost which haunted a house and terrified to death all the inhabitants of the dwelling; a philosopher who was brave enough to follow it discovered at the place where the spectre stopped some bones which had not been buried in the proper manner. The shade of the Emperor Caligula wandered in the gardens of the palace; it was necessary to disinter the body and bury it anew in regular form.