If we pass from the most material to the most spiritual element in human life, we find this also directed to a certain extent by the Senate. Although religion in its various departments was under the control of special guilds, yet these colleges possessed little power of initiative, and an executive authority was necessary to carry out their will. The announcement of prodigies was met by the Senate with forms of expiation suggested by the priestly colleges. In the Sibylline books above all answers might be discovered whose political was even greater than their religious import. When the dangerous annexation of Egypt could be staved off by a few lines on these mysterious leaves,[1381] it is no wonder that their own guardians, the _decemviri_, scarcely dared to unfold them without the authorisation of the Senate. The activity of the _comitia_ was sometimes hampered by the Senate’s habit of decreeing extraordinary festivals (_feriae_),[1382] while the successful general was dependent on its will for the duration of the thanksgivings (_supplicationes_) which followed his victory.[1383] The reception of a new god into the Roman Pantheon was probably in strict law a popular right,[1384] but it is one that seems to have been tacitly conceded to the Senate.[1385] CHAPTER VII THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF ROME AND THE INCORPORATION OF ITALY The peoples of Greece and Italy offer, amidst many general points of similarity, some striking differences in their conceptions of international relations. The pan-Hellenic sentiment, which created a shadowy law of nations, has no pan-Italic counterpart. Outside the Greek city-state there was but the sentiment of nationality to create rules for human conduct; but, for this very reason, the rules, when created, were of pan-Hellenic validity. In Italy we get narrower but closer groupings; its history is the history of leagues, and the inevitable result of this more concentrated life was a closeness of international ties between the federated members which stood in marked contrast to the vagueness of the relations between the isolated groups. The ties of religion and of ethnic affinity, as expressed in an obvious similarity of institutions, were, in Italy as elsewhere, the strongest connecting forces between states; but in Italy they were but the first rude ligaments that gave place to a stronger political bond and that crumbled to pieces when the more enduring chain had been forged. The festival of the Alban Mount became to the Latins, as the sacred centre of Volsinii to the Etruscans, but the religious symbol of a lasting league. Beyond the limits of the league the national and religious sentiment was weak. There was no Delphi to direct the Italian peoples, and no Olympia at which they might meet.