Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/525

 CHAP. ni. CHEISTIANITT. 519 pearcd, and the Roman city, the last one left, was it- self so transformed that it became the union of a dozen great nations under a single master. Thus fell the mu- nicipal system. It does not beloi.g to our plan to tell by what system of government this was replaced, or to inquire if this change was at first more advantageous than unfortu- nate for the nations. We must stop at the moment when the old social forms which antiquity had estab- lished were forever effaced. CHAPTER III. Christianity changes the Conditions of Government. The victory of Christianity marks the end of ancient so-MCty. With the new religion this social transforma- tion, which we saw begun six or seven centuries earlier, ■was completed. To understand how much the principles and the es- sential rules of politics were then changed, we need only recollect that ancient society had been established by an old religion whose principal dogma was that every god protected exclusively a single family or a single city, and existed only for that. This was the time of the domestic gods and the city-protecting di- Tinities. This religion had produced laws; the rela- tions among men — property, inheritance, legal pro- ceedings — all were regulated, not by the principles of natural equity, but by the dogmas of this religion, and with a view to the requirements of its worship. It was this religion that had established a government among