Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/263

 <3HP. XI. THE LAW. 257 The religious origin of ancient law also explains to us one of the principal characteristics of this law. Re- ligion was purely civil, that is to say, peculiar to each city. There could flow from it, therefore, only a civil law. But it is necessary to distinguish the sense which this word had among the ancients. When they said that the law was civil, — jus civile^ rdfiot Tiolmy.oi^ — they did not understand simply that every city had its code, as in our day every state has a code. They meant that their laws had no force, or power, except between the members of the same city. To live in a city did not make one subject to its laws and place him under their protection ; one had to be a citizen. The law did not exist for the slave ; no more did it exist for the stranger. We shall see, further along, that the stranger domi- ciled in a city could be neither a projjrietor there, nor an heir, nor a testator; he could not make a contract of any sort, or appear before the ordinary tribunals of the citizens. At Athens, if he happened to be the creditor of a ciiizen, he could not sue him in the courts for the payment of the debt, as the law recognized no contract as valid for him. These provisions of ancient law were perfectly logi- cal. Law was not born of the idea of justice, but of religion, and was not conceived as going beyond it. In order that there should be a legal relation between two men, it was necessary that there should already exist a religious relation; that is to say, that they should woiship at the same health and have the same sacrifices. When this religious community did not exist, it did not seem that there could be any legal re- lation. Now, neither the stranger nor the slave had any part in the religion of the city. A foreigner and a 17