Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/69

CHAP. III. had yet been altered. Each one of there possessed a religion and gods, a precious trust, over which it was required to watch. The greatest misfortune that its piety had to fear, was that its line of descendants might cease and come to an end ; for then its religion would disappear from the earth, its fire would be extinguished, and the whole series of its dead would fall into oblivion and eternal misery. The great interest of human life was to continue the descent, in order to continue the worship.

In view of these opinions, celibacy was a grave impiety and a misfortune ; an impiety, because one who did not marry put the happiness of the manes of the family in peril; a misfortune, because lie himself would receive no worship after his death, and could not know "what the manes enjoyed." Both for himself and for his ancestors it was a sort of damnation.

We can easily believe that in the absence of laws such a belief would long be sufficient to prevent celibacy. But it appears, moreover, that, as soon as there were laws, they pronounced celibacy to be wrong, and a punishable offence. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who had searched the ancient annals of Rome, asserts that he had seen an old law which required young people to many. Cicero's treatise on the laws — a treatise which almost always reproduces, under a philosophic form, the ancient laws of Rome — contains a law which forbids celibacy. At Sparta, the legislation of Lycurgus deprived the man who did not marry of all the rights of citizenship. We know from many anecdotes, that when celibacy ceased to be forbidden