Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/277

 CHAP. XIV. THE MUNICIPAL SPIRIT. 271 these usages, to make a single state of entire Greece? How could men bold the public repasts, and perform all the sacred ceremonies, in which every citizen was bound to take a part? "Where would they locate the prytaneum? How would they perform the annual lustration of the citizens? What would become of the inviolable limits which had from the beginning marked out the territory of the city, and which sepa- rated it forever from the rest of the earth's surface? What would become of all the local worships, the city divinities, and the heroes who inhabited every canton ? Athens had within her limits the hero CEdipus, the enemy of Thebes: how unite Athens and Thebes in the same worship and under the same government? When these superstitions became weakened (and this did not happen till a late period, in common minds), it was too late to establish a new form of state. The division had become consecrated by custom, by inter- est, by inveterate hatreds, and by the memory of past struggles. Men could no longer return to the past. Every city held fast to its autonomy : this was the name they gave to an assemblage which corapiised their worship, their laws, their government, and their entire religious and political independence. It was easier for a city to subject another than to annex it. Victory might make slaves of all the inhab- itants of a conquered city, but they could not be made citizens of the victorious city. To join two cities in a single state, to unite the conquered population with the victors, and associate them under the same govern- ment, is what was never seen among the ancients, with one exception, of which we shall speak presently. If Sparta conquered Messenia, it was not to make of the Spartans and Messenians a single people. The Spar