Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/269

 CHAP. XII. YHE CITIZEN AND THE STEANGEE. 263 to establish f system that should be vexatious towards foreigners ; but there was nothing of this. Athens and Rome, on the contrary, gave him a good reception, both for commercial and political reasons. But neither their good will nor their interest could abolish the ancient laws which religion had established. This religion did not permit the stranger to become a proprietor, because he could not have any part in the religious soil of the <;ity. It permitted neither the foreigner to inherit from the citizen, nor the citizen to inherit from the foreigner; because every transmission of property carried with it the transmission of a worship, and it was as impossible for the citizen to perforin the foreigner's worship as for the foreigner to perform the citizen's. Citizens could welcome the foreigner, watch over him, even esteem him if lie was rich and honorable; but they could give him no part in their religion or their laws. The slave in certain respects was better treated than he was, because the slave, being a member of the family whose worship he shared, was connected with the city through his master ; the gods protected him. The Roman religion taught, therefore, that the tomb of the slave was sacred, but that the foreigner's was not.' A foreigner, to be of any account in the eyes of the law, to be enabled to engage in trade, to make con- tracts, to enjoy his property securely, to have the benefit of the laws of the city to protect him, must become the -client of a citizen. Rome and Athens required every foreigner to adopt a patron.^ By choosing a citizen as a patron the foreigner became connected with the city. ' Digest, XI. tit. 7, 2 ; XLV7I. tit. 12, 4.
 * Harpocration, nqoaxccxt,?.