(ancient Rome) a member of the highest council of priests in ancient Rome

Usage examples of pontifex.

Through the absurd extravagances of poets and augurs, and through the growth of critical thought, this unbelief went on increasing from the days of Anaxagoras, when it was death to call the sun a ball of fire, to the days of Catiline, when Julius Casar could be chosen Pontifex Maximus, almost before the Senate had ceased to reverberate his voice openly asserting that death was the utter end of man.

I closed my eyes and for an instant, half asleep, glimpsed rising before me the outline of Pontifex Hall framed in its monumental arch, the inscribed keystone above cast in shadow and maculated with moss and lichen, the words barely visible beneath.

Cornelius Merula, the censor Publius Licinius Crassus, the banker and merchant Titus Pomponius, the banker Gaius Oppius, Quintus Mucius Scaevola Pontifex Maximus, and Marcus Antonius Orator, just returned to the Senate after a protracted illness.

Pontifex Tyeveras, many high posts have been left unfilled in recent years, my lord, and therefore a certain slowing of Pontifical functions has developed.

How would they react, she wondered, if they knew that their father might suddenly be much closer than ever before to becoming Pontifex, and that they could all find themselves uprooted from their good life at the Castle and forced to move along to the grim subterranean Labyrinth, the Pontifical seat far to the south, before long?

But it was a decision made by the College of Pontifices, and if the members were not kept up to the mark by a conscientious Pontifex Maximus, the calendar fell by the wayside, as it did now.

College of Pontifices took its duties seriously, and intercalated an extra twenty days every two years, after the month of February.

It took control of membership in the priestly colleges of pontifices and augurs away from the incumbent members, who had traditionally co-opted new members.

Magnus, whereas it gives Caesar a chance he could never have had when the College of Pontifices chose its own Pontifex Maximus.

He had left the most important interview until last, deeming it better to establish his authority within the College of Pontifices before he saw the Vestal Virgins.

Generations of wealthy Pontifices Maximi had poured money and care into it, even knowing that whatever portable they gave, from chryselephantine tables to inlaid Egyptian couches, could not later be removed for the benefit of family heirs.

I imagine one of the Pontifices Maximi of that era deciphered the originals and made these copies.

I question the legality of anything beyond what has already been donea pronouncement by the College of Pontifices that Publius Clodius did commit sacrilege.

It specified that new pontifices and augurs must be elected by a tribal Assembly comprising seventeen of the thirty-five tribes chosen by lot.

Until this law, pontifices and augurs were co-opted by the College members.