One of the oldest religious colleges was the sisterhood of the Vestal Virgins, who kept alive the sacred fire on the hearth of the state in Vesta's temple, and preserved the Roman Penates. Their prayers were supposed to have especial potency, and so they prayed every day for the general weal of the whole people and offered special prayers in time of public distress.
Other state priesthoods were the College of Augurs, whose business it was to discover from the flight or voices of birds whether the gods were favorable or unfavorable to any state pro posal—a sort of state counsel to all public offi cials—and the religious, close corporations of the Luperci (in the service of Taunus). the Salii (in the service of Mars-Quirinus), the Arval Brothers (in the service of the Dea Dia); but none of these last had any function to perform save on festal occasions connected with their particular deity. Thus there were priests enough, but the priests were, after all, officers of the law rather than of religion in our sense of the word. They dictated no creeds, preached no sermons, never tried to move the feelings of worshipers, and they could rarely mediate between an individual and his god. Their mediation was necessary only when a common sacrifice was to be made or a common prayer offered.
Everyone might offer his own sacrifice or prayer; and the Romans were much given to prayer; they prayed regularly every morning and evening, at the beginning and at the end of every meal. No sacrifice, of whatever sort, was unac companied by prayer. Besides this, the pious Roman prayed in private before undertaking any business of importance, and joined in the priests' prayers in public celebrations of a religious char acter. The assembly of the people, the meetings of the senate, the preparations for war, the public games, election, even the theater—all these were opened with prayer.
(5) Sacrifice and Prayer. Anyone might sac rifice and pray; but every sacrifice and every prayer, to be efficacious, must conform exactly to the specifications of the religious law. When anyone had a favor to ask from heaven, he must know first just whom to ask. And that was no small difficulty; for, considering the almost count less hosts of the Roman pantheon, the most min ute knowledge of the specialty of each one of the because of some insignificant slip of the tongue or hand the same rite had to be performed again from thirty to fifty times before it was exactly correct. To be perfectly exact—and nothing else
would do—demanded information not possessed by ordinary men. Therein lay the power of the pontifical guild. Its members were the attorneys and counselors in religious law, as they were also jurisconsults. They alone had access to the names of the gods and their functions; they alonepos sessed the requisite knowledge of all the infinite details of worship and of the books in which were contained the forms of prayer for every occasion. These books were called the Indtgitamenta (sa digitare, "to point out"), because they pointed out the right gods and the right prayers to use.
The Romans' prayers were diffuse. The prayer, once uttered, was repeated over in a new form, for they could not afford to be misunderstood. Small words were very important ; and so in serious cases of the public weal the worshiper, not daring to trust mere memory, had one priest by him to dictate the forms, another with the book to see that nothing was added or omitted, a immortals and of the functions that each per formed was indispensable.
The worshiper must, therefore, discover not only the attributes and the specialty of the god to whom he would sacrifice and pray, but also his true name; or, at least, the one by which the god preferred to be called; for, if called by any other name, he might not hear, or, worse still, might misunderstand. So Romans never addressed a prayer without using a variety of names to im prove the chances of getting the right one, add ing often: "Be thou god or goddess, man or woman, whoever thou art, and by whatever name thou wilt be called." Even when they prayed to Jupiter they took pains to say: "Almighty Jupiter, or by whatever other name thou wilt rather be called." When all this had been accurately discovered, the next step was to know the proper form in which the prayer was to be couched. For, as in legal matters, the plea was thrown out of court, if it was not presented in proper form, so in re ligious affairs the slightest inaccuracy of expres sion or gesture would render the whole proceed ing null and void, or even work the opposite of what was desired. It is a matter of record that third to guard against any profane speech, while a flute-player went up and down to drown out any profane speech that might happen to be uttered.