CHAPTER XIII - FAITH AND MANNERS

Summary

Roman austerity and Roman pride

Life, in the case of the Roman, was spent under conditions of austere restraint, and, the nobler he was, the less he was a free man. All-powerful custom restricted him to a narrow range of thought and action; and to have led a serious and strict or, to use the characteristic Latin expressions, a grave and severe life, was his glory. Neither more nor less was expected of a Roman than that he should keep his household in good order and unflinchingly bear his part of counsel and action in public affairs. But, while the individual had neither the wish nor the power to be aught else than a member of the community, the glory and the might of that community were felt by every individual citizen as a personal possession to be transmitted along with his name and his homestead to his posterity; and thus, as one generation after another was laid in the tomb and each in succession added its fresh contribution to the stock of ancient honours, the sense of collective dignity in the noble families of Rome swelled into that mighty pride of Roman citizenship, to which the earth has never perhaps witnessed a parallel, and the traces of which, as singular as they are grand, seem to us whenever we meet them to belong as it were to another world.