Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/137

 CHAP. X. TRE GENS AT KOME AXD IX GREECE. 131 terior of cnch house; a man loved his house, his home, fixed and durable, which he had received from his an- cestors, and which he transmitted to his children as a sanctunry. Ancient morality, governed by this belief, knew no charity; but it taught at least the domestic virtues. Among this race the isolation of the family was the commencement of morals. Duties, clear, precise, and imperious, appeared, but they were restricted within a narrow circle. This narrow character of primitive morals we must recollect as we proceed ; for civil so- ciety, founded later on these same principles, put on the same character, and several singular traits of an- cient politics are explained by this fact.' CHAPTER X. The Gens at Rome and in Greece. We find in the writings of Roman jurists and in Greek writers the traces of an antique institution which appears to have had its flourishing period in the first ages of Greek and Italian societies, but which, be- coming enfeebled by degrees, left vestiges that were hardly perceptible in the later portion of their history. "We speak of what the Romans called gens, and the Greeks yhoz. ' What is said of ancient morals in this chapter is intended to apply to tiiose peoples that afterwards became Greeks and Ro- mans. This morality was modified with time, especially among the Greeks. Already in the Odyssey we find new sentiments and other manners.