CHAP. VI. THE GODS OF THE CITY. 193 Things like these would interest the Romans to a wonderful degree. In tliis poem they saw themselves, their founder, their city, their institutions, their religion, their empire. For without those gods the Roman city would not have existed.' CHAPTER VI. The Gods of the City Wb must not lose sight of the fact that, among the ancients, what formed the bond of every society was a worship. Just as a domestic altar held the members of a family grouped around it, so the city was the collec- tive group of those who had the same protecting deities, and who performed the religious ceremony at the same altar. This city altar was e.iclosed within a building which Ihe Greeks called prytaneum, and which the Romans called temple of Vesta.*
- We need not inquire here if the legend of ^neas repre-
sents a real fact ; that it was believed is enough for us. It shows as how the ancients looked upon the founder of a city, what idea Ihey had of a. penatigcr ; and for us this is the important point. We may add, that several cities in Tiirace, in Crete, in Epirus, at Cythcra, at Zacynthus, in Sicily, and in Italy looked upon ..^ncas as their founder, and worshipped him as such.
- The prytaneum contained the common hearth of the city:
Dion of Ilalicarnasssus, II. 23. Pollux, I. 7. Scholiast of Pindar, New,., XI. Scholiast of Thucydides, II. 15. There was a pryta- neum in every Greek city: Herodotus, III. 67; V. G7; VII. 197. Polyb., XXIX. 6. AxiYii&n, MUhridatic War,2Z; Punic War, 84. Diodorus, XX. 101. Cicero, De Signis, 5.3. Dio- 13
