Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/270

 264 THE CITY. BOOK in. Thencefoith he participated in some of the benefits of the civil law, and its jDi-otection was secured. CHAPTER XIII. Patriotism. Exile. The word country, among the ancients, signified the land of the fathers, terra patria — fatherland. The fatherland of every man was that part of the soil which his domestic or national religion had sanctified, the land where the remains of his ancestors were deposited, and which their souls occupied. His little fatherland was the family enclosure with its tomb and its hearth. The great fatherland was the city, with its prytaneum and its heroes, with its sacred enclosure and its terri- tory marked out by religion. " Sacred fatherland " the Greeks- called it. Nor was it a vain word ; this soil was, indeed, sacred to man, for his gods dwelt there. State, city, fatherland : these words were no abstraction, as they are among the moderns ; they really represented a group of local divinities, with a daily worship and beliefs that had a powerful influence over the soul. This explains the patriotism of the ancients — an en- ergetic sentiment, which, for them, was the supreme virtue to which all other virtues tended. Whatever man held most dear was associated with the idea of country. In it he found his property his security, his laws, his faith, his god. Losing it he lost everything. It was almost impossible that private and public in- terests could conflict. Plato says, " Our country begets us, nourishes us, educates us ; " and Sophocles says^ "It is our country that preserves us." ,