Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/35

 ^'HAP. HI. THE SACKED FIRE. 29 that man first conceived the idea of ibe Rupernatural, and began to have a hope beyond what he saw. Death was the first mystery, and it placed man on the track of other mysteries. It raised his thoughts from the visible to the invisible, from the transitory to the eternal, from the human to the divine. CHAPTER III. The Sacred Fire. In the house of every Greek and Roman was an altar; on tliis altar there had always to be a small quantity of ashes, and a few lighted coals.' It was a sacred obligation for the master of every house to keep the fire up night and day. "Woe to the house where it was extinguished. Every evening they covered the coals with ashes to prevent them from being entirely consumed. In the morning the first care was to revive this fire with a few twigs. The fire ceased to glow upon the altar only when the entire family had perished ; an extinguished hearth, an extinguished family, were synonymous expressions among the ancients." ' The Greeks called this altar by various names, fiw/noi, ia/ana, iar'tu; this last finally prevailed in use, and was the name by which they afterwards designated the goddess Vesta. The Latins called the same altar ara or focus. siod, Opera, 732. iEsch., Agam., 105G. Eurip., Here. Fur., ^03, 599. Thuc, I. 13G. Aristoph., Plut., 795. Cato, De Ee Bust., 143. Cicero, Fro Domo, 40. TibuUus, I. 1, 4. Horace, Fpod., II. 43. Ovid, A. A., I. C37. Virgil, II. 512.
 * Homeric Hymns, XXIX. Orphic Hymns, LXXXIV. He-