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Another prominent survival equally characteristic of primitive peoples is the sacredness which attaches to the person of the priest-king, so that his every act or word may have a magic significance or effect. This is reflected generally in the Roman priesthood, but especially in the ceremonial surrounding the flamen Dialis, the priest of Iuppiter.
It happened that both the curule aediles, who had been created at the elections, were persons who could not immediately undertake the office: for Caius Cornelius Cethegus was elected in his absence, when he was occupying Spain as his province; and Caius Valerius Flaccus, who was present, being flamen Dialis, could not take the oath of observing the laws; and no person was allowed to hold any office longer than five days without taking the oath.
Though confarreatio was the only essentially religious form of marriage, and was sanctified by the presence of the pontifex maximus and the flamen Dialis, yet marriage even in the less religious ceremony of coemptio was always a sacrum. The central ceremony of the confarreatio was an act partly of sacrifice, partly, one might almost say, of communion.
In it the highest and best lovis of the Capitol that is, the genius of the Roman people was placed at the head of all the Roman divinities, and his "kindler" thenceforth appointed, the -flamen Dialis-, formed in conjunction with the two priests of Mars the sacred triad of high-priests.
The old sacrificing priesthoods, such as the Fratres Arvales and the lesser Flamines, seem not to have been filled up by the pontifices whose duty it was to do so: and the Flamen Dialis, the priest of Jupiter himself, is not heard of from 89 to 11 B.C., when he appears again as a part of the Augustan religious restoration.
In the oldest religious calendar we find two festivals called Vinalia, one in April and the other in August; what exactly was the relation of each of them to the operations of viticulture is by no means clear, but we know that these operations were under the protection of Jupiter, and that his priest, the Flamen Dialis, offered to him the first-fruits of the vintage.
The first cross we meet with on the coins in question, is upon one of Julius Caesar; who was appointed Flamen Dialis B.C. 87, Pontiff B.C. 74, Military Tribune B.C. 73, Quaestor B.C. 68, Pontifex Maximus B.C. 63, and Dictator B.C. 49. The cross in question consists of the name C. Cossutius Maridianus arranged as a cross of four equal arms.
At sixteen, an age when Bonaparte was still an unknown student, Cæsar was Flamen Dialis, or high priest of Jupiter, and at one and twenty, the 'ill-girt boy, as Sylla called him from his way of wearing his toga, was important enough to be driven from Rome, a fugitive.
Marius had made young Cæsar, Flamen Dialis: priest of Jupiter. The voice of the conqueror of Gaul and German sank with a half tremor; his eye was moist, his lips continued moving after his words had ceased to flow. Drusus felt himself searched through and through by glance and speech.
"Take back your curse!" shouted the flamen Dialis, rushing up to her and seizing her hand. With her last strength Glyceria raised herself, her eyes rolled wildly over the throng and, once more summoning all the bitterness of her heart, she raised both hands and extending them over the multitude shrieked: "Be accursed!"
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