=4. Directness of Relation--Functions of Priests.=--In contrast to all
this precision of ritual, which tends almost to alienate humanity from
deity, we may turn to another hardly less prominent feature of the
Roman religion--the immediateness of relation between the god and his
worshippers. Not only may the individual at any time approach the altar
of the god with his prayer or thank-offering, but in every community of
persons its religious representative is its natural head. In the
family the head of the household (_pater familias_) is also the priest
and he is responsible for conducting the religious worship of the whole
house, free and slave alike: to his wife and daughters he leaves the
ceremonial connected with the hearth (_Vesta_) and the deities of the
store-cupboard (_Penates_), and to his bailiff the sacrifice to the
powers who protect his fields (_Lares_), but the other acts of worship
at home and in the fields he conducts himself, and his sons act as his
acolytes. Once a year he meets with his neighbours at the boundaries of
their properties and celebrates the common worship over the
boundary-stones. So in[4] the larger outgrowth of the family, the
_gens_, which consisted of all persons with the same surname (_nomen_,
not _cognomen_), the gentile _sacra_ are in the hands of the more
wealthy members who are regarded as its heads; we have the curious
instance of Clodius even after his adoption into another family,
providing for the worship of the _gens Clodia_ in his own house, and we
may remember Virgil's picture of the founders of the _gentes_ of the
Potitii and the Pinarii performing the sacrifice to Hercules at the
_ara maxima_, which was the traditional privilege of their houses.
When societies (_sodalitates_) are formed for religious purposes they
elect their own _magistri_ to be their religious representatives, as we
see in the case of the Salii and the Luperci. Finally, in the great
community of the state the king is priest, and with that exactness of