Sublime

What is certain is that by the sixth century BCE Rome was an urban community, with a centre and some public buildings.

The orators, therefore, soon received the title of demagogues, — that is to say, of conductors of the city; and indeed they did direct its action, and determined all its resolutions.

As to invoking the justice of Rome against his acts of violence or his crimes, the provincials could not do this unless they could find a Roman citizen who would act as their patron,631 for, as to themselves, they had no right to demand the protection of the laws of the city, or to appeal to its courts.

All this history was a material proof of the existence of the national gods; for the events which it contained were the visible form under which these gods had revealed themselves from age to age. Even among these facts there were many that gave rise to festivals and annual sacrifices. The history of the city told the citizen what he must believe a

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

They could not found a city there, because they could not find a priest who knew how to perform the religious ceremony of the foundation. They could not elect magistrates, for they had no prytaneum with its perpetual fire, where the magistrate might sacrifice. They could find no foundation for social laws, since the only laws of which men then had

They were called Lares, Penates, Genii Demons, Heroes;284 under all these names were human souls deified.

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

It happened, in the course of time, the divinity of a family having acquired a great prestige over the imaginations of men, and appearing powerful in proportion to the prosperity of this family, that a whole city wished to adopt him, and offer him public worship, to obtain his favors.