Sublime

We must not picture to ourselves the city of these ancient ages as an agglomeration of men living mingled together within the enclosure of the same walls. In the earliest times the city was hardly the place of habitation; it was the sanctuary where the gods of the community were; it was the fortress which defended them, and which their presence san

In what precedes we have seen how the municipal governments were constituted among the ancients. A very ancient religion had at first founded the family, and afterwards the city.

Neither do we find, at any epoch in the life of the ancients, anything that resembled that multitude of villages so general in France during the twelfth century.

From these precise memorials and traditions, which Athens preserved so religiously, there seem to us to be two truths equally manifest: the one is, that the city was a confederation of groups that had been established before it; and the other is, that society developed only so fast as religion enlarged its sphere. We cannot, indeed, say that religi

If we understand by legislator a man who creates a code by the power of his genius, and who imposes it upon other men, this legislator never existed among the ancients. Nor did ancient law originate with the votes of the people. The idea that a certain number of votes might make a law did not appear in the cities till very late, and only after two

For this reason, in the primitive city all political institutions had been religious institutions, the festivals had been ceremonies of the worship, the laws had been sacred formulas, and the kings and magistrates had been priests. For this reason, too, individual liberty had been unknown, and man had not been able to withdraw even his conscience f