Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/258

 252 THE CITY. BOOK III. They were the direct finrl necessary consequence of the belief; they were religion itself applied to the re- lations of men among themselves. The ancients said their laws came from the gods. The Cretans attributed their laws, not to Minos, but to Jupiter. The Lacedaemonians believed that their legislator was not Lycurgus, but Apollo. The Romans believed that Numa wiote under the dictation of one of the most powerful divinities of ancient Italy — the goddess Egeria. The Etruscans had received their laws from the god Tages. There is truth in all these traditions. The veritable legislator among the ancients was not a man, but the religious belief which men en- tertained. The laws long remained sacred. Even at the time when it was admitted that the will of a man or the votes of a people might make a law, it was still neces- essary that religion should be consulted, and at least that its consent should be obtained. At Rome it was not believed that a unanimous vote was sufficient to make a law binding; the decision of the ])eople re- quired to be ratified by the pontiffs, and the augin-» were required to attest that the gods were favorable to the proposed law,' One day, when the tribunes of the people wished to- have a law adopted by the assembly of the tribes, a patrician said to them, "What right have you to make a new law, or to touch existing laws? You, who have not the auspices, you, who, in your assemblies, perform no religious acts, what have you in common with reli- gion and sacred things, among which must be reckoned the laws?'"* » Dionysius, IX. 41; IX. 49. ' Dionysius, X. 4. Livy, III. 51.