Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/132

126 prayer, or to offer the sacred repast. The god was so severe that he admitted no excuse; he did not distinguish between an involuntary murder and a premeditated crime. The hand stained with blood could no longer touch sacred objects, To enable a man to renew his worship, and to regain possession of his god, he was required at least to purify himself by an expiatory ceremony. This religion knew pity, and bad rites to efface the stains of the soul. Narrow and material as it was, it still knew how to console man for his errors.

If it absolutely ignored the duties of charity, at any rate it traced for man with admirable precision his family duties. It rendered marriage obligatory; celibacy was a crime in the eyes of a religion that made the perpetuity of the family the first and most holy of duties. But the union which it prescribed could be accomplished only in the presence of the domestic divinities; it is the religious, sacred, indissoluble union of the husband and wife. No man could omit the rites, and make of marriage a simple contract by consent, as it became in the latest period of Greek and Roman society. This ancient religion forbade it, and if one dared to offend in this particular, it punished him for it. For the son sprung from such a union was considered a bastard, that is to say, a being who had neither place nor sacred fire; he had no right to perform any sacred act; he could not pray.

This same religion watched with care over the purity of the family. In its eyes the greatest of crimes was adultery. For the first rule of the worship was