Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/43

 CHAP. in. THE SACRED FIEE. 37 that in the common and primitive language designated an altar. By a process frequent enough, a common noun had become a proper name. By degrees a legend was formed. They pictured this divinity to themselves as wearing a female form, because the word used for altar was of the feminine gender. They even went so far as to represent this goddess in statues. Still they could never efface the primitive belief, according to which this divinity was simply the fire upon the altar; and Ovid himself was forced to admit that Vesta was nothing else than a " living flame." ' If we compare this worship of the sacred fire with the worship of the dead, of W'hich we have already spoken, we shall perceive a close relation between them. Let us remark, in the first place, that this fire, which was kept burning upon, the hearth, was not, in the thoughts of men, the fire of material nature. What they saw in it was not the purely physical element that warms and burns, that transforms bodies, melts metals, and becomes the powerful instrument of human in- dustry. The fire of the hearth is of quite another nature. It is a pure fire, which can be produced only by the aid of certain rites, and can be kept up only with certain kinds of wood. It is a chaste fire ; the union of the sexes must be removed far from its presence.' They pray to it not only for riches and health, but also for purity of heart, temperance, and wisdom. " Render us rich and flourishing," says an Or[)]nc hymn ; "make us also wise and chaste." Thus the hearth-fire is a sort of a moral being ; it shines, and warms, and cooks the • Ovid, Fast., VI, 291. • Hesiod, Opera, 731. Plutarch, Comm- on lies., frag. 43.