392 THE REVOLUTIONS. BOOK IV. insignia which, in all the ancient cities, designated ma- gistrates and priests, for the veneration of men. He was never counted among the Roman mac;istrates. What, then, was the nature, and what was the princi- ple, of his power? Here we must banish from our minds all modern ideas and liabits, and transport our- selves as much as possible into the midst of the ideas of the ancients. Up to that time men had understood political autliority only as an appendage to the priest- hood. Thus, when they wished to establish a power that was not connected with worship, and chiefs who were not priests, they were forced to resort to a singu- lar device. For this, the day on which they created the first tribune, they performed a religious ceremony of a peculiar character.* Historians do not describe the rites; they merely say that the effect was to render these first tribunes sacrosmicti. Now, these words signified that the body of the tribune should be reck- oned thenceforth among the objects which religion forbade to be touched, and whose simple touch made a man unclean.* Tluis it ha])pened, if some devout Roman, some patrician, met a tribune in the public street, he made it a duty to purify himself on return- ing home, "as if lus body had been defiled simply by the meeting," ^ This sacrosaiict character remained attached to the tribune during the whole term of liis oflice ; then in creating his successor, he transmitted ' Livy, III. 55.
- This is the proper sense of the word sacer. Pl.autus Bacch.,
IV. 6, 13. Catullus, XIV. 12. Festus, v. Sacer. Macrobius, HI. 7. According to Livy, the epithet sacrosanctus was not at first applied to the tribune, but to the man who injured the per- son of the tribune. 3 Plutarch, Rom. Quest., 81.
