[364] They, of course, wore the _praetexta_ when performing religious acts. Cp. the Fratres Arvales, who laid aside the _praetexta_ after sacrificing. Henzen, _Acta Fr. Arv._ pp. 11, 21, and 28. [365] Serv. _Aen._ xi. 543. The _camillae_ assisted the _flaminicae_, Marquardt, p. 227. This is one of the most beautiful features of the stately Roman ritual, and has been handed on to the Roman Church. It was, of course, derived from the worship of the household (see above, p. 74). [366] _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, p. 413 foll. Dr. Frazer is criticising Dr. Farnell, who had touched on the subject in the _Hibbert Journal_ for 1907, p. 689, and had taken the more obvious view that death in a family disqualified for actions requiring extreme holiness. [367] The passages are collected in Marquardt, p. 174 foll.; we may notice in particular Livy xlv. 5. 4, where, though only the washing of hands is referred to, we have the important statement that "omnis praefatio sacrorum," _i.e._ the preliminary exhortation of the priest, enjoined _purae manus_. Livy must be using the language of Roman ritual, though he is not speaking here of a Roman rite. For the material of sacred utensils see Henzen, _Acta Fratr. Arv._ p. 30. [368] Tibullus ii. 1. 11. [369] Cic. _de Legibus_, ii. 10. 24. [370] Westermarck, _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, ii. 352 foll.; consult the index for further allusions to the subject. Cp. Farnell, _Evolution of Religion_, Lecture III. [Fehrle, _Die kultische Keuschheit im Altertum_ (Giessen, 1910), has reached me too late for use in this chapter.] [371] Full details, with the most important references quoted in full, are in Marquardt, p. 172 foll.; but some of the latter are applicable only to the Graeco-Roman period. [372] So we may gather from the Lex Furfensis of 58 B.C. (_C.I.L._ ix. 3513), and that of the Ara Augusti at Narbo of A.D. 12 (_C.I.L._ xii. 4333). [373] The real origin of the pontifices and their name is unknown to us. If they took their name from the bridging of the Tiber, as Varro held (_L.L._ v. 83) and as the majority of scholars believe (see O. Gilbert, _Rom. Topographie_, ii. 220, note), the difficulty remains that they are found in such a city as Praeneste, where there was no river to be bridged, and where they could not well have been merely an offshoot from the Roman college; see Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 432, note. Nor can we explain how they came to be set in charge of the _ius divinum_; and where there are no data conjecture is useless.