Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/186

 180 THE CITY. BOOK III. that for the act about to tnke place, it is necessary that the people be pure; and the ancients believed they could purify themselves frc>m all stain, physical or moral, by leaj^ing through a sacred flame. When this preliminary ceremony had prepared the people for the grand act of the foundation, Romulus dug a small trench, of a circular form, and threw into it a clod of earth, which he had brought from the city of Alba.' Then each of his companions, approaching by turns, following his example, threw in a little eartl), which he had brought from the country from which he had come. This rite is remarkable, and reveals to us a notion of the ancients to which we must call attention. Before coming to the Palatine, they had lived in Alba, or some other neighboring city. There was their sacred fire; there their fathers had lived and been buried. Now, their religion forbade them to quit the land where the hearth had been established, and where their divine ancestors reposed. It was necessary, then, in order to be free from all impiety, that each of these men should employ a fiction, and that he should carry with him, under the symbol of a clod of earth, the sacred soil where his ancestors were buried, and to which their manes were attached. A man could not quit his dwell- ing-place without taking with him his soil and his ancestors. This rite had to be accomplished, so that he might say, pointing out the new jjlace which he had adopted. This is still the land of my lathers, terra pa- trum, patria ; here is my country, for here are the manes of my family. The trench into which each one had thrown a little earth was called mundus. Now, this word designated hi ' Plutarch, Romulus, 11. Dion Cassius, Fragm., 12. Ovid, Fasii, IV. 821, Festus, v. Quadrata.