Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/95

 CIIAF. VI. THE EIGUT OF PROPERTY. 8& immolated in expiation. The Etruscan law, speaking in the name of religion, says, "He who sliall have touched or displaced a bound shall be condemned by the gods; his house shall disappear; his race shall be extinguished ; his land shall no longer produce fruits; bail, rust, and the fires of the dog-star shall destroy his harvests; the limbs of the guilty one shall become covered with ulcers, and shall waste away." ' Wo do not possess the text of the Athenian law on this sub- ject; there remain of it only three words, which signify, "Do not pass the boundaries." But Plato appears to complete the thought of the legislator when he says, "Our first law ought to be this: Let no person touch the bounds which separate his field from that of his neighbor, for this ought to remain immovable. . . . Let no one attempt to disturb the small stone which separates friendship from enmity, and which the land- owners have bound themselves by an oath to leave in its place."' From all these beliefs, from all these usages, from all these laws, it clearly follows that the domestic religion taught man to apj^ropriate the soil, and assured him his right to it. There is no difficulty in understanding that the right of property, having been thus conceived and established, was nmch more complete and absolute in its efl:ects than it can be in our modern societies, where it is founded uj^on other principles. Pro2:)eity was so in- herent in the domestic religion that a family could not renounce one without renouncing the other. The house and the field were — so to speak — incorporated ' Script. Rei Agrar., ed. Goez, p. 258. « Plato, Laws, VIII. p. 842.