Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/526

 520 MUNICIPAL REGIME DISAPPEAES. BOOK T. men ; that of the father in the family ; that of the king or magistrate in the city. All had come from religion, — that is to say, from the opinion that man had enter- tained of the divinity. Religion, law, and government were confounded, and had been but a single thing un- der three different aspects. We have sought to place in a clear light this social system of the ancients, where religion was absolute master, both in public and private life ; where the state was a religious community, the king a pontiff, the ma- gistrate a priest, and the law a sacred formula; where patriotism was piety, and exile exconmiunication ; where individual liberty was unknown ; where man was enslaved to the state through his soul, his body,, and his property; Avhere the notions of law and of duty, of justice and of affection, were bounded within the limits of the city; where human association was neces- sarily confined within a certain circumference around a prytaneum ; and where men saw no possibility of founding larger societies. Such were the character- istic traits of the Greek and Italian cities during the first period of their history. But little by little, as we have seen, society became modified. Changes took place in government and in laws at the same time as in religious ideas. Already, in the fifth century which preceded Christianity, the alliance was no longer so close between religion on the one hand and law and politics on the other. The ef- forts of the oppressed classes, the overthrow of the sacerdotal class, the labors of philosophers, the progress of thought, had unsettled the ancient princi])les of hu- man association. Men had made incessant efforts to free themselves from the thraldom of this old religion, in which they could no longer believe ; law and politics.