Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/222

198 for the State religion. The device invented for this purpose was a curious one, and well illustrates the peculiar character of the Roman political mind, which demanded the sanction of the gods for every step taken. The tribunes were, during their year of office, devoted to the gods (sacrosancti); the binding force of the religious idea was called in to protect them. De Coulanges, going perhaps too far, has called them a kind of living altars to which the oppressed could fly for refuge; at any rate, any one who violated their sanctity was guilty of sacrilege. The act of legislation by which this was secured was itself a lex sacrata — that is, a kind of treaty between two communities foreign to each other, whose relations need to be controlled by some special religious security. Soon afterwards the position of the tribunes was further strengthened by a law which forbade interference with any assembly of the plebs which a tribune had summoned, and perhaps also giving them some means of securing the punishment of any one who violated their sanctity or hindered their activity.

It is not necessary here to trace the steps by which these germs of authority grew gradually into a most formidable power, positive as well as negative. Let us keep to the Tribunate as it originally was, and note the stage it marks in the transitional period we are traversing. It is no advance towards a real political union that is here indicated. The aristocracy as yet shows no sign that it can entertain the