Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/316

 310 THE REVOLUTIONS. BOOK It slope of the Capitoline Hill, where Romulus admitted people without hearth or home, whom lie could not admit into his city. Later, when new plebeians came to Rome, as they were strangers to the religion of the city, they were established on the Aventine — thp^t ia to say, without the iDomoerium, or religious city. One word characterizes these plebeians — they were without a hearth ; they did not possess, in the begin- ning, at least, any domestic altars. Their adversaries were always reproaching them with having no ances- tors, which certainly meant that they had not the wor- ship of ancestors, and had no family tomb where they could carry their funeral repast. They had no father— pater / that is to say, they ascended the series of their ascendants in vain ; they never arrived at a religious family chief. They had no family — genton non habent / that is to say, they had only the natural fam- ily; as to the one which religion formed and consti- tuted, they had not that. The sacred marriage did not exist for them ; they knew not its liles. Having no hearth, the union that the hearth established was forbidden to them ; there- fore the patricians, who knew no other regular union than that which united husband and wife in jjresence of the domestic divinity, could say, in speaking of the plebeians, " Connuhia promiscua habent more fera- rum.'"' There was no fimily for them, no paternal authoiity. They had the power over their children Avhich strength gave them ; but that sacred authority with which religion clothed the father, they had not. For them there was no right of property ; for all property was established and consecrated by a hearth, a tomb, and termini — that is to say, by all the ele- ments of the domestic worship. If the plebeian pos*