Even in war the general had not at first the power of punishing the freeman. The very urgencies of military discipline were subordinated to the divine authority of the priests. “Duces exemplo potius quam imperio, si prompti, si conspicui, si ante aciem agant, admiratione praesunt. Ceterum neque animadvertere, neque vincire, ne verberare quidem nisi sacerdotibus permissum; non quasi in poenam, nec ducis jussu, sed velut deo imperante, quem adesse bellantibus credunt.” Tac. Germ. vii. ----- How then is it to be determined to whom such power, once admitted to be necessary, shall be at first entrusted? The first claim clearly lies with those who are believed to be descended from the gods, or from the local god of each particular district[224]. They are his especial care, his children; he led them into the land, and gave them the secret of appeasing or pleasing him: he protects them by his power, and guides them by his revelations: he is their family and household god, the progenitor of their race, one of themselves; and they are the best, indeed the only, expounders of his will. A single family, with which others have by slow degrees united themselves, by which others have been adopted, and which in process of time have thus become the nucleus of a state, will probably remain in possession of this sacerdotal power; the god of the land does not readily give place to others, and those with whom his worship identifies him will continue to be his priests long after others have joined in their ceremonies. Or it is possible that a single household wandering from a more civilized community may be admitted among a rude people, to whom they impart more perfect methods of tillage, more efficient medical precepts, more impartial maxims of law, better or more ornamental modes of architecture, or more accurate computations of time, than they had previously possessed: the mysterious courses of the stars, the secrets of building bridges[225], towers and ships, of ploughing and of sowing, of music and of healing, have been committed to them by their god: for the sake of the benefits they offer, their god is received into the community; and they remain his priests because they alone are cognizant of, and can conduct, the rites wherewith he is to be served. ----- Footnote 224: “Diis genitos sacrosque reges.” Tac. Orat. 12. Footnote 225: It is a curious fact that _Pontifex_, literally the _bridge-maker_, should be the generic Latin name for a priest. At Athens there was a _gens_ of γεφυραίοι: were these ever a sacerdotal tribe? -----