Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/92

 86 THK FAMILY. BOOK II. become confounded, and the dead would be abandoned and witliout worship. By the stationary hearth and the permanent burial-place, the family took possession of the soil ; the earth was in some sort imbued and pen- etrated by the religion of the hearth and of ancestors. Thus the men of the early ages were saved the trouble of resolving too difficult a problem. Without discus- sion, witliout labor, without a shadow of hesitation, they arrived, at a single step, and merely by virtue of their belief, at the conception of the right of property; this light from which all civilization springs, since by it man improves the soil, and becomes improved himself Religion, and not laws, first guaranteed the right of property. Every domain was under the eyes of house- hold divinities, who watched over it.' Every field had to be surrounded, as We have seen for the house, by an enclosure, which separated it completely from the domains of other families. This enclosure was not a wall of stone; it was a band of soil, a few feet wide, which remained uncultivated, .ind which the plough could never touch. This space was sacred ; the Ro- man law declared it indefeasible ; " it belonged to the religion. On certain appointed days of each month and year, the father of the family went round his field, following this line ; he drove victims before him, sang hymns, and offered sacrifices.^ ' By this ceremony he believed he had awakened the bcnevo- posita in fundi villosqve conspectu. Cicero, De Legih., II. 11. " Cicero, De Legib., I. 21. ^ Cato, De Re Jiusi., 141. Script. Rei Agrar., edit. Goe2, p 308. Dionysius of Ilalicarn.nssus, II. 74. Ovid, Fast., II. G39 Strabo, V. 3.
 * Lares agri cv.siodes, Tibullus, I. 1, 23. Religio Larum