Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/52

 46 ANCIENT BELIEFS. BOOK I. door, where it would have been too easy to see.' The Greeks always placed it in an enclosure,* which pro- tected it fiom the contact, or even the gaze, of the profane. Tiie Romans concealed it in the interior of the house. All these gods, the sacred fire, the Lares, and the Manes, were called the consecrated gods, or gods of the interior. To all the acts of this religion secrecy was necessary.^ If a ceremony was looked upon by a stranger, it was disturbed, defiled, made un- fortunate simply by this look. There were neither uniform rules nor a common ritual for this domestic religion. Each family was most completely independent. No external power had the right to regulate either the ceremony or the creed. There was no other priest than the father: as a jiriest, he knew no hierarchy. The pontifex of Rome, or the ai'chon of Athens, might, indeed, ascertain if the father of a family performed all his religious ceremonies; but he had no right to order the least modification of them. Suo quisque ritu sacrificia facial — such was the abso- lute rule.* Every family had its ceremonies, which were peculiar to itself, its particular celebrations, its formulas of prayer, its hymns.' The father, sole interpreter and sole priest of his religion, alone had the right to teach it, and could teach it only to his son. The rites, tho forms of prayer, the chants, which formed an essential part of this domestic religion, were a patrimony, a sacred property, which the family shared with no one, and ' This enclosure was called V 5^05. ' Ofot ^j'jj-foj, dii Penates. ' Cicero, De Arusp. Eesp., 17. ' Ilesiod, Opera, 753. Macrobius, Sat., I. 10. Cic, De £egib.,U. 11.
 * Varro, Be Ling. Lat., VII. 88.