Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/262

 256 THE CITY. BOOK in. would not surprise us if wo but recollected that an- cient law wns a religion, a siicrcd text, and justice a col- lection of rites. The i)l.iinliflr pursues with the law — affU lege. By the text of the law ho seizes his adver- sary: but let hiui bo on his guard ; to have the law on his side, he must know its terms, and pronounce them exactly. If he speaks one word for another, the law exists no longer for him, and cannot defend him. Gains gives an account of a man whose vines had been cut by his neighbor; the fact was setlleil; he pionounced the law. But the law said trees; he pronounced viues, and lost his case. Repeating the law Avas not sufficient. There was also needed an acconipnnimeut of exteiior signs, which were, so to say, the rites of this leligious cere- mony called a contract, or a case in law. For this reason at every sale the little piece of co]iper and the balance were employed. To buy an ai'ticle, it was necessary to touch it with the hand — inanci patio ^ and if there was a dispute about a piece of property, there was a feigned combat — ■manuwn consertio. Hence were derived the forms of liberation, those of emancipation, those of a legal action, and all the [)antomime of legal procedure. As law was a part of religion, it participated in the mysterious cliaracter of all this i-e!igiou of the cities. The legal formulas, like those of religion, were kept se- cret. They were concealed from the stranger, and even from the jilebeian. This was not because the ]»atrieians had calculated that tiiey should possess a great power in the exclusive knowledge of the law, but because the law, by its origin and nature, long ai)peared to be a mystery, to which one could be initiated only after having first been initiated into the national worship and the domestic worship.