Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/234

 228 THE CITY. BOOK III. like Herodotus ; the thinkers, like Thucydides. Histo- ry then left the hands of the priests, and became some- thing quite different. Unfortunately these beautiful and brilliant writings still leave us to regret the early annals of the cities, and all that they would have taught us of the beliefs and the inner life of the an- cients. But these books, which appear to have been kept secret, which never left the sanctuaries, which were never copied, and Avhich the priests alone read, have all perished, and only a faded recollection of them lias remained. This trace, it is true, has a great value for us. With- out it we should perhaps have a right to reject all that Greece and Rome relate to us of their antiquities; all those accounts, that appear to us so improbable, be- cause they differ so much from our habits and our man- ner of thinking and acting, might pass for the product of men's imaginations. But this trace of the old an- nals that has remained shows us the pious respect which the ancients had for their history. Every city had archives, in which the fucts were religiously pre- served as fast as they took place. In these sacred books every page was contemporary with the event which it recorded. It was materially impossible to alter these documents, for the priests had the care of them ; and it was greatly to the interest of religion that they should remain unalterable. It was not even easy for the pontiff, as he wrote the lines, skilfully to insert statements contrary to the truth ; for he believed that all events came from the gods; that he revealed their will, and that he was giving future generations subjects for pious souvenirs, and even for sacred acts. Every event that took placje in the city commenced at once to form a part of the religion of the future. With