Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/304

 298 THE CITY. BOOK UL coming king.' The dangerous maxim that the safety of the state is the supreme law, was the work of an- tiquity.* It was then thought that law, justice, morals, everything should give way before the interests of the country. It is a singular eri'or, therefore, among all human errors, to believe that in the ancient cities men enjoyed liberty. They had not even the idea of it. They did not believe that there could exist any right as against the city and its gods. We shall see, farther on, that the government changed form several times, while the nature of the state remained nearly the same, and its omnipotence was little diminished. The government was called by turns monarchy, aristocracy, democracy ; but none of these revolutions gave man true liberty, individual liberty. To have political rights, to vote, to name magistrates, to have the privilege of being archon, — this was called liberty; but man Avas not the less enslaved to the state. The ancients, especially the Greeks, always exaggerated the importance, and above all, the rights of society ; this was largely due, doubt- less, to the sacred and religious character with which society was clothed in the bcjginning. ' Plutarch, Publicola, 12. * Cicero, De Legib., III. 8.