If then the approach to the gods is so direct, where, it may be asked, in the organisation of Roman religion is there room for the priest? Two points about the Roman priesthood are of paramount importance. In the first place, they are not a caste apart: though there were restrictions as to the holding of secular magistracies in combination with the priesthood--always observed strictly in the case of the _rex sacrorum_ and with few exceptions in the case of the greater _flamines_--yet the _pontifices_ might always take their part in public life, and no kind of barrier existed between them and the rest of the community: Iulius Caesar himself was _pontifex maximus_. In the second place they are not regarded as representatives of the gods or as mediators between god and man, but simply as administrative officials appointed for the performance of the acts of state-worship, just as the magistrates were for its civil and military government. In origin they were chosen to assist the king in the multifarious duties of the state-cult--the _flamines_ were to act as special priests of particular deities, the most prominent among them being the three great priests of Iuppiter (_flamen Dialis_), Mars, and Quirinus; the _pontifices_ were sometimes delegates of the king on special occasions, but more particularly formed his religious _consilium_, a consulting body, to give him advice as to ritual and act as the repositories of tradition. In later times the _flamines_ still retain their original character, the _pontifices_ and especially the _pontifex maximus_ are responsible for the whole organisation of the state-religion and are the guardians and interpreters of religious lore. In the state-cult then the priests play a very important part, but their relation to the worship of the individual was very small indeed. They had a general superintendence over private worship and their leave would be required for the introduction of any new domestic cult; in cases too where the private person was in doubt as to ritual or the legitimacy of any religious practice, he could appeal to the _pontifices_ for decision. Otherwise the priest could never intervene in the worship of the family, except in the case of the most solemn form of marriage (_confarreatio_), which, as it conferred on the children the right to hold certain of the priesthoods, was regarded itself as a ceremony of the state-religion. In his private worship then the individual had immediate access to the deity, and it was no doubt this absence of priestly mediation and the consequent sense of personal responsibility, no less than its emotional significance, which caused the greater reality and permanence of the domestic worship as compared with the organised and official cults of the state. FOOTNOTES: [3] Etruscan builders were according to tradition employed on the earliest Roman temples. [4] This is all open to doubt, but see De Marchi, _Il Culto Privato_, vol. ii. CHAPTER IV