Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/89

 CHAP. VI. THE EIGHT OF PROPERTY. 83 of the family tomb, or to place a stranger in ihia tomb, was equally impious.^ The domestic rehgion, both in life and in death, separated every family from all others, and strictly rejected all appearance of com- munity. Just as the houses could not be contiguous, so the tombs could not touch each other ; each one of them, like the house, had a sort of isolating enclosure. How manifest is the character of private property in ail this ! The dead are gods, who belong to a particular family, which alone has a right to invoke them. These gods have taken possession of the soil ; they live under this little mound, and no one, except one of the family, can think of meddling with them. Furthermore, no- one has the right to dispossess them of the soil which they occupy ; a tomb among the ancients could never be destroyed or displaced; ' this was forbidden by the- severest laws. Here, therefore, was a portion of the soil which, in the name of religion, became an object of perpetual property for each family. The family ap- propriated to itself this soil by placing its dead here; it Avas established here for all time. Th^ living scion of this family could rightly say. This land is mine. It was so completely his, that it was inseparable from him, and he had not the right to dispose of it. The soil where the dead rested was inalienable and irapre- • Cicero, De Legib., 11.22; II. 20. Gaius, Instii.,U. 6. Digest, XLVII. tit. 12. We must note that the slave and the client, as we shall see, farther on were a part of the family, and were buried in the common tomb. The rule which prescribed that every man should be buried in the tomb of his family, ad- mitted of an exception in the case where the city itself granted a public funeral. place could be changed, the permission of the pontiffs wasv required. Pliny, Letters, X. 73.
 * Lycurgus, against Leocrates, 25. At Rome, before a burial-