Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/794

 778 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

All these rites, institutions, and creeds were not isolated facts nor aberrations. They were quite natural and, under various forms, universal. Thus one finds the same usages among the Sabinians and the Etruscans before the Roman conquest. 16 The Etruscans were a different race. They probably did not belong to the Aryan race, but came from the eastern regions of the Mediter- ranean, after having been expelled by Greek invaders.

The Greeks likewise had sacred boundaries : Spot, 0eol o/otot. 17 Plutarch and Dionysius of Halicarnassus translate terminus by S/w. In Greek it was also named rep^v. 19

The frontier was always known as eternal, as an indisputable and perfect form of the social equilibrium. The discussion of any institution whatsoever is already a sign of its transformation. The immovable and sacred "term" guarded the border of the field. It warned the neighbor not to touch it even involuntarily ; for otherwise "the god who is hurt by the plowshare or the mattock exclaimed: 'Stop! this is my field; yonder is yours,'" 19 The violator of the "term" was cursed, he and his beasts: "Qu'il soit mandit celui qui a arrache une borne, lui et ses boeufs." 20 According to Etruscan law, 21

he who has tondred or removed the landmark will be condemned by the gods ; his house will disappear; his race will be exterminated; his field will not produce any fruits ; hail, blight, the heat of the dog-star will destroy his harvest; the limbs of the guilty will be covered by ulcers and destroyed by consumption.

If these visitations were not exactly realized, since there existed, within the family groups forming the city, at least a more or less organized justice of a theocratic character, they continued to rage through war, when the frontiers between neighboring societies were disputed. There the conflicts caused the destruction of the harvest and the extermination exactly as formerly in the feuds between the families and the hostile clans.

Plato foresaw this correlation of the economic, familiary, or

"Varro, L, V, 74.

"Pollux, IX, 9; Hwychius, *. v. Spot; Plato, Laws, VIII, 842.


 * Euripides, Eltctra, G 6. " Ovid, Fasti, II, 677.


 * Ftutel de Coulanges, La cHt antique.


 * Scriptortt rei ograriat, ed. Goez, p. 258, or ed. Lachmann, p. 35.