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Other traces of the pure decimal system occur but sparingly in this field; among them are the -versus-, the Sabellian measure of surface of 100 square feet, and the Roman year of 10 months. The Duodecimal System The very earliest Latin priesthoods, the colleges of the Salii and Arvales, as well as the leagues of the Etruscan cities, were organized on the basis of the number twelve.
He stuck at nothing in professions of belief in unseen agencies, good and bad; apologizing afterwards to Gwen for doing so by representing the ease of believing in them just for a short time, to square matters. Optional belief was no invention of his own, he said, but an ancient and honourable resource of priesthoods all the world over.
In former ages priesthoods were necessary, because people were illiterate and uneducated and were dependent on priests for their religious instruction, for the conduct of religious rites and ceremonies, for the administration of justice, et cetera. Now, however, times have changed.
There loom up, out of the darkness of legend, into the as yet dim dawn of history, what the old Arabs call Races of pre-Adamite Sultans colossal monarchies, with fixed and often elaborate laws, customs, creeds; with aristocracies, priesthoods seemingly always of a superior and conquering race; with a mass of common folk, whether free or half-free, composed of older conquered races; of imported slaves too, and their descendants.
He reduced under subjection to the Romans two very powerful tribes, and above twenty great towns, with the Isle of Wight, which lies close to the coast of Britain; partly under the command of Aulus Plautius, the consular lieutenant, and partly under Claudius himself . For this success he received the triumphal ornaments, and in a short time after two priesthoods, besides the consulship, which he held during the two last months of the year . The interval between that and his proconsulship he spent in leisure and retirement, for fear of Agrippina, who still held great sway over her son, and hated all the friends of Narcissus, who was then dead.
Governing through the magistracy which had been reduced to be their servant, preponderating in the Senate, in sole possession of all public offices and priesthoods, armed with exclusive cognizance of things human and divine and familiar with the whole routine of political procedure, influential in the public assembly through the large number of pliant adherents attached to the several families, and, lastly, entitled to examine and to reject every decree of the community, the patricians might have long preserved their practical power, just because they had at the right time abandoned their claim to sole legal authority.
On the contrary, her reality is more phantom-like now than it was then. She is the sovereign pattern and exemplar of management, of the triumph of the political method in spiritual things, and of the subordination of ideas to the status quo. It is true that all other organised priesthoods are also bodies which move within formularies even more inelastic than those of the Establishment.
It was natural, therefore, that the worshipper of the god should regularly consult such men of skill and listen to their advice; and thence arose the corporations or colleges of men specially skilled in religious lore, a thoroughly national Italian institution, which had a far more important influence on political development than the individual priests and priesthoods.
So that all this religious stir, which seems so multifold and incidental and disconnected and confused and entirely ineffective to-day, may be and most probably will be, in quite a few years a great flood of religious unanimity pouring over and changing all human affairs, sweeping away the old priesthoods and tabernacles and symbols and shrines, the last crumb of the Orphic victim and the last rag of the Serapeum, and turning all men about into one direction, as the ships and houseboats swing round together in some great river with the uprush of the tide. . . .
Now the form of this title is peculiar; it is not a proper name like the titles of all the other priesthoods. Instead it is built on the plan of the titles of the special committees appointed by the Senate for administrative purposes; it bears every mark therefore of having arisen under the republic, rather than under the kingdom, at a time when the Senate had the supreme control.
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