performed by the supreme pontiff (pontifex maximus) and the “king of the sacrifices” (rex sacrorum). No conclusion has been reached so far as to whether the rex sacrorum was heir to the sacral duties of the king,46 later to be overshadowed by the pontifex maximus, or whether a rex sacrorum existed already in regal times in order to fulfill at least partly the religious duties of the king, whose legal competences later fell to the pontiffs (who might have antedated the Republic, too). Roman elaborations of this theory, which is to say, the emic tradition, clearly followed the first route.47 That said, attempts to understand Roman state religion as having its origin in a royal household have not proven fruitful.
There is no reliable evidence for Roman priests before the fifth and especially the fourth centuries.48 Here, Italian evidence is not helpful, either. Evidence for the divinatory specialists called haruspices in Latin sources, and netśvis in Etruscan texts,49 does not antedate the fifth century, nor does the evidence for the priestly role of cipen or cepen assumed by magistrates.50 Priesthoods from Italian townships, which at times exhibit striking similarities to Roman institutions, belong to late republican and imperial times; they might have been the result of early exchange processes, in which Rome may have played the role of donor or recipient. The evidence, however, does not offer any clues to the chronology of such exchanges. As the differentiated Roman priesthood of the late Republic need not be postulated for archaic Rome, the question of how to imagine priests in the regal period could be broken down to a limited set of problems.
Specialists in divination (“seers” with a number of different techniques) are attested in a number of Mediterranean societies. Latin tradition developed the figure of the charismatic seer, embodied in the augur Attus Navius, in structural opposition to political power in the shape of king Tarquin.51 Such figures, whether attacked (the Marcius or Marcii of the third century) or derided (the harioli, “charlatans” of the first century), probably existed throughout Roman history. The high prestige of the college of augurs in the early Republic strongly suggests their institutionalization in some form during the regal period. An early institutionalization likewise renders probable the restriction of this role to patricians by the end of the monarchy. Certainly the right to the auspices seems to have been a kernel of patrician self-definition.52
The existence of an unknown number of religious specialists (not necessarily all male) caring for individual cults and probably cult places can be reasonably assumed. Their name, flamen, points to a much older institutional pattern. In contrast to the augurs or pontiffs, flamines tended to be appointed at a very young age, if third- and second-century evidence can be extrapolated. Groups of aristocratic youths, which is to say, members of an elite close to the king, might well have had the duty to care for some very important cults. The Vestal Virgins would fit such a pattern, as would the Salii and the poorly attested Salian virgins in the cults of Vesta and Mars.53 What is more, if the initiation to banqueting as offered by the Salian priests in the republican period was in fact given to an organized “public” group,54 this might well have been related to “the disappearance at the end of the sixth century of terracotta friezes depicting banqueting scenes” that, it has been suggested, reflects “the disappearance of the private banquet as well, as part of the realignment of social affairs consequent on the fall of the last king.”55
Associations caring for other cults probably sprang up and died. We have no idea of the origins of such groups as the Mercuriales, Arval Brethren, or Sodales Titii, all securely attested at the end of the Republic.56 It cannot be ruled out that the latter went back to the regal period, as was thought in Augustan times.57 Over a very long period, as it seems, some of these groups probably came to be regarded as “public priests” (sacerdotes publici) by the time of the late Republic. That said, before the Augustan revival, most of these were socially and politically without importance. It bears emphasis that the associations most prominent in the evidentiary record, namely the Salii and Vestales, existed outside the political realm proper by reasons of sex or age.
Much prestige was given to the pontiffs. There is considerable evidence for patterns of interaction between them and other priesthoods, indeed, of a limited supervisory role over them. This includes not only the appointing or punishing of flamines or Vestals by the supreme pontiff, but also ritual interaction with the Salii58 and with the Luperci.59 There were also many occasions where they acted together with flamines or Vestals.60 The pontiffs, represented by the pontifex maximus,61 presided over an ancient type of assembly of the curiae, the so-called comitia calata, which was charged with the continuation of families and their cults.62 In his important responsibility for regulation of the calendar, the rex sacrorum is paired with a “minor” pontiff on the Calends63 or with the pontiffs on the “Tubilustrium.”64 The pontiffs as a prominent public priesthood, hence, were the result of a conscious effort at religious centralization, presupposing the existence of both the comitia centuriata (in order to free the comitia (curiata) calata for their presidency) and a rex sacrorum, which might have been an office existing alongside the (political) king already during the late monarchy. The easiest hypothesis would be to attribute such a step to a major restructuring of society such as might be supposed to have occurred at the termination of the monarchy.65 If there had been people called “pontiffs” before, we need not suppose that their role had been comparable. It should be stressed that all the other colleges were modeled on the form of the pontifical college, without necessarily replicating the authority structures obtaining within it. In the case of the augural college, for example, its eldest member served as augur maximus but lacked specific authority; and any institutional role for the college was historically far less important than the power wielded by individual augurs.66
Calendars structure economic, political, and ritual activities. Here the Etruscan Tabula Capuana, a text of some 4,000 letters, dating to the beginning of the fifth century, offers comparative material.67 This fragmentary list of rituals, summarily described, corroborates the Roman antiquarian claim that the structuring of the months by the Ides was Etruscan; it shows a system of weeklike periods (though not necessarily of constant length) from full moon to full moon: iśveita—celuta—tiniana—a perta (institutionally corresponding to Latin Idus—Tubilustrium—Kalendae—Nonae). At Rome, these days concentrate routine cultic activities of the rex and regina sacrorum, the Flamen Dialis (priest of Iuppiter), the pontiffs, and Tubicines (trumpeters), engaging in rituals addressed to Iuppiter, Iuno, and the moon, and adapting this civic rhythm to the lunations, as is typical for a lunar calendar. It was only with the reforms of Appius Claudius Caecus and Gnaeus Flavius in the final years of the fourth century that—by codifying the calendar—months of fixed length were introduced. As a result, the months ceased to correspond to the lunar phases; the result was a pure solar calendar, the basis of today’s Julio-Gregorian calendar.68
Incipient Change
The early Republic was characterized by internal social and political conflicts. Later Roman tradition resolved the complexity of whatever knowledge and tradition it possessed into narratives structured around a dichotomy of patricians and plebeians. In this way, enormously complex historical changes, comprising processes of institutionalization and codification (e.g., the writing of the so-called Twelve Tables, c. 450), of growing social differentiation, and of the establishment of clan groups, gentes, as structures to ensure inheritance within long-lived social structures larger than families, to name but three, were understood as having been designed to distribute political and priestly positions more evenly, thus reducing strife and frustration.69 The specifics of the Roman narrative to one side, it is clear that by the second half of the fourth century, a unified elite had evolved that did not remove the distinction of patricians and plebeians but nonetheless gave equal access to offices to each group. The passing of the lex Ogulnia in 300 opened even the priestly colleges of the augurs and pontiffs to plebeians. More generally, under the pressure of an ideology of citizenship that was necessary for successful
