Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/232

 226 THE CITY. BOOR III of their religion. They had need to look back, for it. was upon recollections and traditions that their entire worship rested. Thus history had for the ancients a greater importance than it has for us. It existed a long time before Herodotus and Thucydides, — written or unwritten; as simple oral traditions, or in books, it was contemporary with the birth of cities. There was no city, however small and obscure it might be, that did not pay the greatest attention to preserving an account of what had passed within it. This was not vanity, but religion. A city did not believe it had the right to allow anything to be forgotten ; for everything in its history was connected with its worship. History commenced, indeed, with the act of founda- tion, and recorded the sacred name of the founder. It was continued with the legend of the gods of the city, its protecting heroes. It taught the date, the origin, and the reason of every worship, and explained its obscure rites. The prodigies which the gods of the country had performed, and by which they had manifested their power, their goodness, or their anger, were recorded there ; there were described the ceremonies by which the priests had skilfully turned a bad presage, or had appeased the anger of the gods; there were recorded the epidemics which had afflicted the city, on what day a temple had been consecrated, and for what rea- son a sacrifice had been established ; there were record- ed all the events which related to religion, the victories that proved the assistance of the gods, and in which these gods had often been seen fighting, the defeats which indicated their anger, and for which it had been necessary to institute an expiatory sacrifice. All this was written for the instruction and the piety of the de- scendants. All this history was a material proof of the