The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome (Illustrated)

The democracy did not suppress poverty, but, on the contrary, rendered it more perceptible. Equality of political rights made the inequality of conditions appear still more plainly.

These Albans, a mixture of two races, founded Rome on a spot where another city had already been built — Pallantium, founded by the Greeks.

Religious isolation is a law with it; its ceremonies are secret.

Many men dreamed at last of establishing above the cities a sort of sovereign power, which should look to the maintenance of order, and compel those turbulent little societies to live in peace. It was thus that Phocion, a good citizen, advised his compatriots m accept the authority of Philip, and promised them, at this price, concord and security.

The wife had rights, for she had her place at the sacred fire; it was her duty to see that it did not die out.209 She too, then, has her priesthood. Where she is not found, the domestic worship is incomplete and insufficient.. It was a great misfortune to a Greek to have a “hearth deprived of a wife.”210 Among the Romans the presence of the wife wa

It was synonymous with the words rex, . It contained in itself not the idea of paternity, but that of power, authority, majestic dignity.

There are three things which, from the most ancient times, we find founded and solidly established in these Greek and Italian societies: the domestic religion; the family; and the right of property — three things which had in the beginning a manifest relation, and which appear to have been inseparable. The idea of private property existed in the re

The citizens who sat at the sacred table were clothed, for the time, with a sacerdotal character; they were called parasites.

The belief of primitive ages, as we find it in the Vedas, and as we find vestiges of it in all Greek and Roman law, was that the reproductive power resided exclusively in the father. The father alone possessed the mysterious principle of existence, and transmitted the spark of life.