Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/183

 CHAP. IV. THE CITY. 177 CHAPTER IV. The City. CiviTAS, and Ukbs, either of which we translate by the word city, were not synonymous words among the ancients. Civitas was the religious and political associ- Mion of families and tribes ; Urbs was the place of assembly, the dwelling-place, and, above all, the sanc- tuary of this association. We are not to picture ancient cities to ourselves as anything like what we see in our day. We build a few houses; it is a village. Insensibly the number of houses increases, and it becomes a city ; and finally, if there is occasion for it, we surround this with a wall. With the ancients, a city was never formed by de- grees, by the slow increase of the number of men and houses. They founded a city at once, all entire in a day ; but the elements of the city needed to be first ready, and this was the most difiicult, and ordinarily the largest work. As soon as the families, the phratries, and the tribes had agreed to unite and have the same worship, they immediately founded the city as a sanc- tuary for this common worship, and thus the foundation of a city was always a religious act. As a first example, we will take Rome itself, not- withstanding the doubt that is attached to its early history. It has often been said that Romulus was chief of a band of adventurers, and that he formed a people by calling around him vagabonds and robbers, and that all these men, collected without distinction, built at hazard a few huts to shelter their booty ; but ancient 12