One is purely religious and ritualistic and is expressed in the control of priesthoods, religious colleges, and cults. The second asserts itself in a control over the life of the ordinary citizen in matters criminal and civil. The third is that which connects the Roman state with other independent communities and forms the international law of the period.
(i.) The control over priesthood and cultus belongs to the history of religion rather than to that of constitutional law, and it chiefly presents a legal aspect in connexion with the question of religious jurisdiction. The difficult questions that arose in Republican times from the clashing of the religious and the civil power could hardly have been heard of as yet, for the supreme control of both was vested in the same man. But the very nature of this disciplinary jurisdiction over priests has been a matter of some dispute. The favourite hypothesis of a family jurisdiction has been applied to the case, and the hypothesis may conceivably be correct so far as the Flamens and the Vestals are concerned, although even in this sphere it is doubtful by what paternal right the head of religion could do the Vestal's paramour to death. Other phases of the power are still more inexplicable on this ground. A right of punishing augurs for a breach of ritualistic rules survived into the Republic, and seems to be a jurisdiction exercised over them as members of a religious body. There is, however, no trace of the priesthood holding a privileged position, and in all secular matters its members are subject to the ordinary law. Such privileges as they possess rest on religious scruples. When the Flamen was caught (captus) for the god, he became free from the paternal power,[1] and the civil authority could not compel him to take an oath.[2] The persons of the Vestals were inviolable;[3] the sanctity of both Flamens and Vestals also invested them with the right of asylum. The bonds were struck off the prisoner who took refuge in the Flamen's house; and, if the criminal on the way to punishment met him or the Vestal, he could not be scourged or executed on that day. But it is only in these two cases that the severance from the world is strongly marked; we have no reason for believing that, in the earliest period of Rome's history, the members of the religious orders
