Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/305

 -CHAP. I. PATRiniANS AND CLIENTS. 299 BOOK FOURTH. THE REVOLUTIONS. CHAPTER I. Patricians and Clients. Certainly we could imagine nothing more solidly ■constituted than this family of the ancient ages, which contained within itself its gods, its worship, its priest, and its magistrate. There could be notliing stronger than this city, which also had in itself its religion, its protecting gods, and its independent priesthood, which governed the soul as well as the body of man, and which, infinitely more powerful than the states of our day, united in itself the double authority that we now see shared between the state and the church. If any so- ciety was ever established to last, it was certainly that. Still, like everything human, it had its revolutions. "We cannot state at what period these revolutions com- menced. We can understand that, in reality, this epoch was not the same for the different cities of Greece and Italy. All that is certain is, that from the seventh cen- tury before our era, this social organization was almost every vi'here discussed and attacked. From that time it was supported only with difficulty, and by a more or less skilful combination of resistance and concessions.