Plutarch's Romane Questions · Plutarch
99.
_What is the cause that among other priests, when one is condemned and banished, they degrade and deprive him of his priesthood, and choose another in his place: onely an Augur, though he be convicted and condemned for the greatest crimes in the world, yet they never deprive in that sort so long as he liveth? Now those priests they call Augurs, who observe the flights of birds, and foreshewed things thereby._ IS it as some do say, because they would not have one that is no priest, to know the secret mysteries of their religion and their sacred rites? Or because the Augur being obliged and bound by great oaths, never to reveale the secrets pertaining to religion, they would not seeme to free and absolve him from his oath by degrading him, and making him a private person. Or rather, for that this word Augur, is not so much a name of honor and magistracie, as of arte and knowledge. And all one it were, as if they should seeme to disable a musician for being any more a musician; or a physician, that he should bee a physician no longer; or prohibit a prophet or soothsayer, to be a prophet or soothsayer: for even so they, not able to deprive him of his sufficiency, nor to take away his skill, although they bereave him of his name and title, do not subordaine another in his place: and by good reason, because they would keepe the just number of the ancient institution.
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