Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/398

 392 THE REVOLUTIONS. BOOK IV. insignia which, in all the ancient cities, designated ma- gistrates and priests, for the veneration of men. He was never counted among the Roman mac;istrates. What, then, was the nature, and what was the princi- ple, of his power? Here we must banish from our minds all modern ideas and liabits, and transport our- selves as much as possible into the midst of the ideas of the ancients. Up to that time men had understood political autliority only as an appendage to the priest- hood. Thus, when they wished to establish a power that was not connected with worship, and chiefs who were not priests, they were forced to resort to a singu- lar device. For this, the day on which they created the first tribune, they performed a religious ceremony of a peculiar character.* Historians do not describe the rites; they merely say that the effect was to render these first tribunes sacrosmicti. Now, these words signified that the body of the tribune should be reck- oned thenceforth among the objects which religion forbade to be touched, and whose simple touch made a man unclean.* Tluis it ha])pened, if some devout Roman, some patrician, met a tribune in the public street, he made it a duty to purify himself on return- ing home, "as if lus body had been defiled simply by the meeting," ^ This sacrosaiict character remained attached to the tribune during the whole term of liis oflice ; then in creating his successor, he transmitted ' Livy, III. 55. IV. 6, 13. Catullus, XIV. 12. Festus, v. Sacer. Macrobius, HI. 7. According to Livy, the epithet sacrosanctus was not at first applied to the tribune, but to the man who injured the per- son of the tribune. 3 Plutarch, Rom. Quest., 81.
 * This is the proper sense of the word sacer. Pl.autus Bacch.,