Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/205

 -CHAP. VI. THE GODS OF THE CITY. 199 Would any one say that it was the same divinity who figured in both armies ? Certainly not ; for the ancient? did not attribute the gift of ubiquity to their gods. The cities of Argos and Samos had each a Here Polias, but it was not the same goddess, for she was represented in the two cities with very different attributes. There was at Rome a Juno; at a distance of five leagues, the city of Veii had another. So little were they the same divinity that we see the dictator Camillus, while be- sieging Yeii, address himself to the Juno of the enemy, to induce her to abandon the Etruscan city and pass into his camp. When he is master of the city, he takes the statue, well persuaded that he gains possession of the goddess at the same time, and devoutly transports it to Rome. From that time Rome had two protect- ing Junos. There is a similar history, a few years later, of a Jupiter that another dictator took from Piae- neste, though at that time Rome already had three or four of them at liome,' The city which possessed a divinity of its own did not wish strangers to be protected by it, or to adore it. More commonly a temple was accessible only to citi- zens. The Argives alone had the riglit to enter the temple of Hera at Argos. To enter that of Athene at Athens, one had to be an Athenian." The Romans who adoied two Junos at home could not enter the temj^le of a third Juno, who was in the little city of Lanu- vium.^ We should not lose sight of the fact that the an- cients never represented God to themselves as a unique being exercising his action upon the universe. Each of ' Livy, V. 21, 22; VI. 29. * Herodotus, VI. 81; V. 72. ^ They acquired this riglit only by conquest. Livy, VIII. 14-