Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/293

 CH &.P. XVI. THE ATHENIAN. 287 importance was not courage, or even discipline, but the enunciation of certain formulas exactly pronounced, according to the lites. These formulas, addressed to the gods, determined them and constrained them almost always to give him the victory. For such a general the supreme recompense was for the senate to- permit him to offer the triumphal sacrifice. Then he ascends the sacred chariot drawn by four white horses;. he wears the sacred robe with which the gods are clothed on festal days; his head is crowned, his right hand holds a laurel branch, his left the ivory scep- tre; these are exactly the attributes and the costume of Jupiter's statue.' With this almost divine majesty he shows himself to the citizens, and goes to render homage to the true majesty of the greatest of the Ro- man gods. He climbs the slope of the Capitol, arrives before the temple of Jupiter, and immolates victims. The fear of the gods was not a sentiment peculiar to the Roman ; it also reigned in the heart of the Greek. These peoples, originally established by reli- gion, and elevated by it, long preserved the marks of their first education. We know the scruples of the Spartan, who never commenced an expedition before the full moon, who was continually sacrificing victim* to know whether he ought to fight, and who renounced the best planned and most necessary enterprises be- cause a bad presage frightened him. The Athenian was not less scrupulous. An Athenian army never set out on a campaign before the seventh day of the month,^ and when a fleet set sail on an expedition, great care was taken to regild the statue of Pallas. ' Livy, X. 7; XXX. 15. Dionysius, V. 8. Appian, Pwntc Wars, 59. Juvenal, X. 43. Pliny, XXXIII. 7.