Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/414

 408 THE EEVOLUTIONS. HOOK IV. their religion. But, with the lapse of time, it became a serious thing, and the plebeian came to believe that^ even as to worship and the gods, he was equal to the pa- trician. Here were two opposing principles in action. The patrician persisted in declaring that the sacerdotal character and the right of adoring the divinity were hereditary. The plebs freed religion and the j^riest- hood from the old hereditary character, and main- tained that every man was qualified to pronounce prayere, and that, provided one was a citizen, he had the right to perform the ceremonies of the city wor- ship. He thus arrived at the conclusion that a plebe ian might be a priest. If the priestly offices had been distinct from the mili tary commands, and from politics, it is possible that the plebeians would not have coveted them so ardently. But all these things were confounded. The priest was a magistrate; the pontiff was a judge; the augur could dissolve the public assemblies. The plebeians did not fail to perceive that, without the priesthoods, they had not really civil or political equality. They therefore claimed that the pontificate should be shared by the two orders, as the consulship had been. It became difficult to allege their religious incapacity as an objection, since, for sixty years, plebeians had been seen, as consuls, performing the sacrifices ; as censors, making the lustrations; as conquerors of the enemy, fulfilling the sacred formalities of the triumph. Through the magistracies the plebs had already gained possession of a part of the priestly offices; it was not easy to save the rest. F.aith in the hereditary princi- ple of religion had been destroyed among the patricians themselves. In vain a few amonsr them invoked the