Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/318

 312 THE EEVOLUTIONS. BOOK IV» this law was worcled thus: "Let no one undertake to strike or kill a tribune as he would one of the plebs." ' It seems, therefore, that any one had a right to strike or to kill a plebeian ; or, at least, that this misdeed committed against a man who was beyond tiie pale of the law was not punished. The plebeians had no political rights. They were not at first citizens, and no one among them could be a magistrate. For two centuries there was no olher assembly at Rome than that of the curies; and the curies did not include the plebeians. The plebs did not even enter into the composition of the army so long as that was distributed by curies. But what manifestly separated the plebeian from the patrician was, that the plebeian had no part in the re- ligion of the city. It was impossible for him to fill the priestly office. We may even supjjose that in the^ earliest ages prayer was forbidden him, and that the rites could not be revealed to him. It was as in India "where " the Sudra should always be ignorant of the sacred formulas," He was a foreigner, and consequently his presence alone defiled the sacrifice. lie Avas re- pulsed by the gods. Between him and the patrician there was all the distance that religion could place between two men. The plebs were a despised and abject class, beyond the pale of religion, law, society, and the family. The patrician could compare such aa existence only with that of the brutes — more ferarum. The touch of the plebeian was impure. The decem- virs, in their first ten tables, had forgotten to interdict marriage between the two orders; for these first de- cemvirs were all patricians, and it never entered the ' Dionjsius, VI. 89.