Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/373

 CHAP. VII. lUE PLEBS ENTER THE CITY. 367 Finally, the inferioi- class succeeded in having a re- ligion of its own. These men had in their hearts, we may suppose, that religious sentiment which is insepa- rable from our nature, and which renders adoi'ation and prayer necessary to us. They suffered, therefore, to find themselves shut out from all religion by the ancient principle which prescribed that every god belonged to a family, and that the right of prayer was transmitted with the blood. They strove, therefore, to have a worship of their own. It is impossible to enter here into the details of the efforts that they made, of the means which they in- vented, of the difiiculties or the resources that occurred to them. This work, for a long time a separate study for each individual, was long the secret of each mind; we can see only the results. Sometimes a plebeian family set up a hearth of its own, whether it dared to light the fire itself or procured the sacred fire else' where. Then it had its worship, its sanctuary, its pro- tecting divinity, and its priesthood, in imitation of the patrician family. Sometimes the plebeian, without hav- ing any domestic worship, had recourse to the temples of the city. At Rome those who had no sacred fire, and consequently no domestic festival, offered their annual sacrifices to the god Qtfirinus.' When the upper class persisted in driving the lower oi'ders from the temples, the latter built temples of their own. At Rome they had one on the Aventine, which was sacred to Diana; they also had the temj>lc of Plebeian Modesty. The Oriental worshii^s, which began in the sixth century to oveiTun Greece and Italy, were eagerly received by the plebs ; these were forms of worship which, like Buddhism, ' Varro, L. L., VI. 13.