special, sometimes even intimate relationships with particular deities. For instance, Scipio Africanus claimed Jupiter as a personal mentor. Some gentes claimed a divine descent, often thanks to a false etymology of their name; the Caecilii Metelli pretended to descend from Vulcan through his son Caeculus, the Mamilii from Circe through her granddaughter Mamilia, the Julii Caesares and the Aemilii from Venus through her grandsons Iulus and Aemylos. In the 1st century, Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar made competing claims for Venus' favour. Priesthoods With the abolition of monarchy, some of its sacral duties were shared by the consuls, while others passed to a Republican rex sacrorum (king of the sacred rites"), a patrician "king", elected for life, with great prestige but no executive or kingly powers. Rome had no specifically priestly class or caste. As every family's pater familias was responsible for his family's cult activities, he was effectively the senior priest of his own household. Likewise, most priests of public cult were expected to marry, produce children, and support their families. In the early Republic the patricians, as "fathers" to the Roman people, claimed the right of seniority to lead and control the state's relationship with the divine. Patrician families, in particular the Cornelii, Postumii and Valerii, monopolised the leading state priesthoods: the flamines of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus, as well as the pontifices. The patrician Flamen Dialis employed the "greater auspices" (auspicia maiora) to consult with Jupiter on significant matters of State. Twelve "lesser flaminates" (Flamines minores), were open to plebeians, or reserved to them. They included a Flamen Cerealis in service of Ceres, goddess of grain and growth, and protector of plebeian laws and tribunes. The plebs had their own forms of augury, which they credited to Marsyas, a satyr or silen in the entourage of Liber, plebeian god of grapes, wine, freedom and male fertility. The priesthoods of local urban and rustic Compitalia street-festivals, dedicated to the Lares of local communities, were open to freedmen and slaves, to whom "even the heavy-handed Cato recommended liberality during the festival"; so that the slaves, "being softened by this instance of humanity, which has something great and solemn about it, may make themselves more agreeable to their masters and be less sensible of the severity of their condition". The Lex Ogulnia (300) gave patricians and plebeians more-or-less equal representation in the augural and pontifical colleges; other important priesthoods, such as