52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



(prophets and priests) and one lay member, the registrar. But in another 

 case (Ramses IX) the lay element preponderated. 



Which last statement implies a step toward differentiation of 

 the secular from the sacred in local administration. 



To the circumstance that the Greek States did not become 

 fully united has already been ascribed the fact that the Greek 

 priesthood never became a hierarchy. Says Thirlwall "the 

 Greek priests never formed one organized body . . . even within 

 the same State they were not incorporated." Hence the normal 

 development of sundry professions is less distinctly to be traced. 

 Nevertheless the relation between the priestly and the judicial 

 functions is visible in a rudimentary, if not in a developed, form. 

 Among the Greeks, as among the Hebrews, it was the habit in 

 cases of doubt to "inquire of the Lord"; and the oracular utter- 

 ance embodying the will of a god was made by a priest or priest- 

 ess. Moreover, the circumstance that Greek laws were called 

 themistes or utterances of the goddess Themis, as the mouthpiece 

 of Zeus, shows that among the early Greeks, as among other peo- 

 ples, a law and a divine fiat were the same thing. That systems 

 of law were regarded as of supernatural origin, is also evidenced 

 by the code of Lycurgus. Says Hase : " The origin of his code 

 was religious. A declaration of the Delphic god contains the 

 fundamental principles of the measures by which he reconciled 

 the rival claims" [of the Spartans]. That the non-development 

 of a legal class out of a priestly class followed from the lack of 

 development of the priestly class itself, seems in some measure 

 implied by the following extract from Thirlwall : 



" The priestly office in itself involved no civil exemptions or disabilities, 

 and was not thought to unfit the person who fi.lled it for discharging the 

 duties of a senator, a judge, or a warrior. . . . But the care of a temple 

 often required the continual residence and presence of its ministers." 

 Possibly the rise of priest-lawyers, impeded by this local fixity 

 and by want of co-operative organization among priests, may 

 have been also impeded by the independence of the Greek nature ; 

 which, unlike Oriental natures, did not readily submit to the ex- 

 tension of sacerdotal control over civil affairs. 



How priestly and legal functions were mingled among the early 

 Romans is shown by the two following extracts from Duruy : 



The patricians "held the priesthood and the auspices; they were priests, 

 augurs, and judges, and they carefully hid from the eyes of the people the 

 mysterious formulae of public worship and of jurisprudence." 



The " servile attachment to legal forms [which characterized the early 

 Romans] came from the religious character of the law and from the belief 

 imposed by the doctrine of augury, that the least inadvertence in the 

 accomplishment of rites was sufficient to alienate the goodwill of the gods." 

 It seems probable, indeed, that legal procedure consisted in part 

 of ceremonies originally devotional, by which the god Numa was 



