Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/315

 CHAP. II. THE PLKBEIAXS. 309 the rhythm of the ])rayer. Tliese families nntiirally found tiiemselves in a state of inferiority compared with those who had a religion, and could not make a part of society with them ; they entered neither into the curies nor into the city. In the course of time it even happened that families which had a religion lost it either by negligence, forgetting the rites, or by one of those crimes which prevented a man fiom approach- ing his hearth and continuing his worship. It must have happened, also, that clients, on account of crime or bad treatment, quitted the family and renounced its religion. The son, too, who was born of a marriage in which the rites had not been performed, was reputed a bastard, like one who had been born of adultery, and the family religion did not exist for him. All these men, excluded from the family and from the woiship, fell into the class of men without a sacred fire — that is to say, became plebeians. We find this class around almost all the ancient'cities, but separated by a line of demarcation. Originally a Greek city was double ; there was the city, properly so called — Ti/jitc, which was built ordinarily on the sum- mit of some hill; it had been built with the religious rites, and enclosed the sanctuary of the national gods. At the foot of the hill was found an agglomeration of houses, which were built without any religious ceremo- ny, and without a sacred enclosure. These were the dwellings of the plebeians, who could not live in the sacred city. At Rome the difference between the two classes was striking. The city of the patricians and their clients was the one that Romulus founded, according to the rites, on the Palatine, The dwellings of the plebs were in the asylum, a sjjecies of enclosure situated on the