Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/413

 CHAP. Vn. THE PLEBS ENTER THE CITY. 407 afterwards confirm the decree.* It refused for ten years to do this. Finally an event took place which Livy has left too much in the shade." It appears that the plebs took arms, and that civil war raged in the streets of Kome. The patricians, when conquered, approved and confirmed in advance, by a senatusconsultum, all the decrees which the people should pass during thai year. Now, nothing prevented the tribunes from pass- ing their three laws. From that time the plebs had every year one of the two consuls, and they were not long in succeeding to other magistracies. The plebeian wore the purple dress, and was preceded by the fasces; he administered justice; he was a senator; he gov- erned the city, and commanded the legions. The priesthoods remained, and it did not seem as if these could be wrested from the patricfans; for, in tha old. religion, it was an unchangeable dogma that the right of reciting the prayers, and of touching sacred objects, was transmitted with the blood. The knowl- edge of the rites, like the possession of the gods, was hereditary. In the same manner as the domestic wor- ship was a patrimony, in which no foreigner could take part, the worshii^ of the city, also, belonged exclusively to the families that had formed the primitive city. As- suredly, in the first centuries of Rome, it would not have entered the mind of any one that a plebeian could be a pontifiT; but ideas had changed. The ple- beians, by taking from leligion its hereditary character, had made a religion for their own use. They had made for themselves domestic Lares, altars in publio square?, and a hearth for the tribes. At first the patri- cians had nothing but contemj^t for this jjarody upon ' Livy, IV. 49. " Livy, IV. 42.