Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/299

 CnAP XVII, OMNIPOTfiNCE OF THE STATE. 29.^ CHAPTER XVII. The Omnipotence of the State- The Ancients knew nothing of Individual Liberty. The city had been founded upon a religion, and constituted like a church. Hence it3 strength ; hence, also, its omnipotence and the absolute empire which it exercised over its members. In a society established on such principles, individual liberty could not exist. The citizen was subordinate in everything, and without any reserve, to the city ; he belonged to it body and soul. The religion which had produced the state, and the state which supported the religion, sustained each other, and made but one ; these two powers, associated and confounded, formed a power almost superhuman, to which the soul and the body were equally enslaved. There was nothing independent in man ; his body belonged to the state, and was devoted to its defence. At Rome military service was due till a man was fifty years old, at Athens till he was sixty, at Sparta always. His fortune was always at the disposal of the state. If the city had need of money, it could order the women to deliver up their jewels, the creditors to give up their claims, and the owners of olive trees to turn over gra- tuitously the oil which they had made.' Private life did not escape this omnipotence of the state. The Athenian law, in the name of religion, for- bade men to remain single." Sparta punished not only those who remained single, but those who married ' Aristotle, Econom., II.
 * Pollux, VIII. 40. Plutarch, Lysander, 30.