Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/69

II the first meaning of the word which has become so famous in the world's history. The citadel, as a centre-point of union, gradually gathers round it a city. A few famous examples are the Acropolis of Athens, the Cadmea of Thebes, the strongholds of Alba and Tusculum, and the Capitoline hill at Rome. But any traveller with an observant eye may verify the process for himself in England, France, Italy, or Greece.

Together with this motive, the preservation of themselves and their property, the primitive villagers doubtless felt the influence of another, which they perhaps hardly realised as distinct from the first. Every community had its worship, as we have seen; every tribe or State had its deities, brought with it in its wanderings from its original home. The gods of the race were its guardians, for the essence of the idea of a deity lies in the fact that man looks to an invisible Power for aid in adversity, as he also expects punishment for neglect and sin. The desire to protect the protector, to keep the guardian from passing over to the enemy as a consequence of neglect, to prevent his holy place from falling into strange hands, was beyond doubt in part what led our forefathers so often to fix the site of their worships on hills and isolated rocks. They would gain protection for their gods in this way, and would also gain a double advantage for themselves — the aid of the gods who were necessary to their welfare, and the aid of the "rock-built refuge" behind which they would be secure. And thus it would come about that the