PONTIFEX. The Latin noun pontifex, designating certain Roman high priests, is thought of as deriving from pons ("bridge") and facere ("to make"). This etymology, held by Varro (De lingua Latina 5.83), is accepted by the majority of modern scholars. Yet the discrepancy between this definition of "bridge maker" and the broad extent of the pontifical function has aroused some resistance among scholars both ancient and modern. At the beginning of the first century BCE the pontifex maximus Q. Mucius Scaevola (cited by Varro, ibid.) preferred to see in the word pontifices a corruption of the word potifices (from posse, "to be able," and facere, "to do," undoubtedly in the sense of "to sacrifice"). Today, there are those who think that pons originally meant "path," even "obstacle path," by reason of its likeness to the Vedic pānthāh.

Commentators since antiquity have been struck by the contrast between the...