Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/55

 BOOK SECOND. THE FAMILY. CHAPTER I. B^eligion was the constituent Principle of the ancient Family. If we transport ourselves in thought to those an- cient generations of men, wc find in cacli house an altar, and around this altar the family assembled. The family meets every morning to address its first prayers to the sacred fire, and in the evening to invoke it for a last time. In the course of the day the members arc once more assembled near the fire for the meal, of which they partake piously after prayer and libation. In all these religious acts, hymns, which their fathers have handed down, are sung in common by the family. Outside the liouso, near at hand, in a neighboring field, there is a tomb — the second home of this family. There several generations of ancestors repose together; death has not separated them. They remain grouped in this second existence, and continue to form an in dissoluble family.* ■ The use of family tombs by the ancients is incontestable; it disappeared only when the beliefs relative to the worship of the ■dead became obscured. The words rucpog nuTQi.,<>:, Tu(pos Tujr 4 49