Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/209

CHAP. VI. thy protection. If thou doest this, I will found a temple in thine honor." Now, the ancients were convinced that there were formulas so efficacious and powerful, that, if one pronounced them exactly and without changing a single word, the god could not resist the request of men. The god thus called upon passed over, therefore, to the side of the enemy, and the city was taken.

In Greece we find the same opinions and similar customs. Even in the time of Thucydides, when the Greeks besieged a city, they never failed to address an invocation to its gods, that they might permit it to be taken. Of'en, instead of employing a formula to at- tract the god, the Greeks preferred to carry off its statue by stealth. Everybody knows the legend of Ulysses' carrying off the Pallas of the Trojans. At another time the Æginetans, wishing to make war upon Epidaurus, commenced by carrying off two protecting statues of that city, and transported them to their own city.

Herodotus relates that the Athenians wished to make war upon the Æginetans, but the enterprise was hazardous, for Ægina had a protecting hero of great power and of singular fidelity; this was Æacus. The Athenians, after having studied the matter over, put off the execution of their design for thirty years; at the same time they built in their own country a chapel to this same Æacus, and devoted a worship to him. They were persuaded that if this worship was continued without interruption during thirty years, the god would belong no longer to the Æginetans, but to themselves. Indeed, it seemed to them that a god could not accept