Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/217

VII intellectual quickness, but he had a marvellous capacity for discipline, and an unbounded veneration for the customs of his forefathers. It was natural, then, that at Rome, when the tyrannis came to an end, it should leave society and manners comparatively unchanged; and in fact we find that as soon as it disappears the aristocratic idea asserts itself as strongly as ever. The aristocracy, as we have already seen, adapted the kingly constitution to their own ends, and the State became aristocratic in form as well as in fact.

The patrician families alone could exercise the imperium; they alone knew the unwritten law; they alone knew the secrets of religion, — how to take the auspices, how to purify the State, how to conduct marriages and funerals in that traditional way which alone could find favour with the gods. On the other hand, the plebeian had his place in the army, and might fight side by side with the patrician, but he could never attain to high command. He might accumulate wealth, and add field to field, but if he had a quarrel with a patrician neighbour he had to submit it to a patrician magistrate, to be decided by rules of which he was wholly ignorant. If he borrowed stock or plant from his neighbour, he had to give his own land or person as security for the debt. He could not marry into a patrician family without violating the most sacred prejudices. Thus the "men of the fathers" and