Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/319

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1em  HOSPITIUM. The power the Greeks possessed of travelling safely among other Greek states depended on the feeling which made hospitality a matter of religion, and looked on strangers as under the protection of Zeus Xenios. A stranger was received and protected during his stay. Violation of the duties of hospitality was likely to provoke the wrath of the gods; but it does not appear that anything beyond this religious sanction existed to guard the rights of a traveller. There is, however, no ground for the common statement that a stranger was ipso facto considered as an enemy. In truth he was a guest. The roads were all sacred; he who passed over them was the guest of the land; he found along their courses statues of the tutelary deity of the road, generally Hermes; and the offerings of food, &c., in front of these he was at liberty to appropriate. Hence the word ep/xcuov was used in the sense of a lucky find. (See Curtius, &quot; Griech. Wegebau,&quot; Berlin AbhandL, 1854.) When the guest parted from his host he was 