Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/310

 304 THE EEVOLUTIONS. BOOK IV. determined the gods to act, — all tliis was transmitted only with the blood. It was therefore very natural that in each of these ancient families, the free person who was really descended from the first ancestor, was alone in possession of the sacerdotal character. The Patricians or Eupatrids had the privilege of being priests, and of having a religion that belonged to them alone. Thus, oven before men left the family state, there existed a distinction of classes ; the old domestic re- ligion had established ranks. Afterwards, when the city was formed, nothing was changed in the inner con- stitution of the family. We have already shown that oi-iginally the city was not an association of individuals, but a confederation of tribes, curies, and families, and that in this sort of alliance each of these bodies re- mained what it had been before. The chiefs of the&e little groups united with each other, but each remahied master in the little society of which he was alieady chief. This explains why the Roman law so long left to the pater the absolute authority over his family, and the control of and the right of judging his clients. The distinction of classes, born in the family, was con- tinued therefore in the city. The city in its first age was no more than an alliance of the heads of families. There are numerous evi- dences of a time when they alone were citizens. Tiiis rule was kept up at Sparta, where the younger sons had no political rights. We may still see vestiges of it in an ancient law of Athens, which declared that to be a citizen one must have a domestic god.' Aristotle remarks that anciently, in many cities, it was the rule that the son was not a citizen during the life of his ' Harpoeration, Ziig inxitog