Sublime

Numa is said to have established, more or less single-handedly, the structure of official Roman religion, and religious institutions that left their mark, and their names, well beyond the limits of this book. In fact, the official title of the Catholic popes even now – pontifex, or ‘pontiff’ – derives or was borrowed from the title of one of the pr

The most ancient generations, long before there were philosophers, believed in a second existence after the present. They looked upon death not as a dissolution of our being, but simply as a change of life.

Two men could call themselves relatives when they had the same gods, the same sacred fire, and the same funeral repast.

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.

They decided that the legislators should all be patricians, but that their code, before being promulgated and put in force, should be exhibited to the eyes of the public, and submitted to the approbation of all classes.

According to the oldest belief of the Italians and Greeks, the soul did not go into a foreign world to pass its second existence; it remained near men, and continued to live under ground.1

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

Pythagoras, having a vague conception of the Supreme Being, disdained the local worships; and this was sufficient to cause him to reject the old modes of government, and to attempt to found a new order of society.

We can understand, too, that such a marriage was indissoluble, and that divorce was almost impossible.