Sublime

They could not found a city there, because they could not find a priest who knew how to perform the religious ceremony of the foundation. They could not elect magistrates, for they had no prytaneum with its perpetual fire, where the magistrate might sacrifice. They could find no foundation for social laws, since the only laws of which men then had

Formerly the law was a religious decision; it passed for a revelation made by the gods to the ancestors, to the divine founder, to the sacred kings, to the magistrate-priests. In the new code, on the contrary, the legislator no longer speaks in the name of the gods. The decemvirs of Rome receive their powers from the people. The people also investe

A century later, royalty was still farther weakened; the executive power was taken away and was intrusted to annual magistrates, who were called ephors.

All this history was a material proof of the existence of the national gods; for the events which it contained were the visible form under which these gods had revealed themselves from age to age. Even among these facts there were many that gave rise to festivals and annual sacrifices. The history of the city told the citizen what he must believe a

By the time the last king was thrown out, towards the end of the sixth century BCE, according to standard modern calculations, we are probably dealing with something in the region of 20,000 to 30,000 inhabitants.

Thus religion was entirely local, entirely civic, taking this word in the ancient sense — that is to say, special to each city.297

The domestic religion forbade two families to mingle and unite; but it was possible for several families, without sacrificing anything of their special religions, to join, at least, for the celebration of another worship which might have been common to all of them.

The primitive kings had performed the duties of priests, and had derived their authority from the sacred fire; the tyrants of a later epoch were merely political chiefs, and owed their elevation to force or election only.

The worship of the gods of Olympus and that of heroes and manes never had anything common between them.