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As civilisation increased, and the sense of the unity of household and community developed, fear, proving ungrounded, gave place to a kindlier feeling of the continued existence of the dead as members of household and state, and even in some sense as an additional bond between the living: this is the period which produced the sacra privata and the Parentalia.
Some of the best things from the Maxims have passed into the Sacra Privata; still, in the Maxims, we have them as they first arose; and whereas, too, in the Sacra Privata the writer speaks very often as one of the clergy, and as addressing the clergy, in the Maxims he almost always speaks solely as a man.
Over the far better known Sacra Privata they have this advantage, that they were prepared by him for his own private use, while the Sacra Privata were prepared by him for the use of the public.
It begins with the note on February 13, Virgo Vestalis parentat, and continues till the climax, Feralia, on February 21. During these days the magistrates laid aside the insignia of their offices, the temples were shut, marriages were forbidden, and every family carried out at the tombs of its relatives ceremonies resembling those of the sacra privata.
There can be little doubt that we find the sources of these words in such a phrase as that of Cicero "Sunt autem privata nulla natura" and in the Stoic tradition which is represented in one of Seneca's letters, when he describes the primitive life in which men lived together in peace and happiness, when there was no system of coercive government and no private property, and says that man passed out of this primitive condition as their first innocence disappeared, as they became avaricious and dissatisfied with the common enjoyment of the good things of the world, and desired to hold them as their private possession.
The words of Adalberon, Archbishop of Rheims, on the subject of the coronation of Hugh Capet, are still true to-day. 'The coronation of the King of the French, he says, 'is a public interest and not a private affair, Publica, sunt haec negotia, non privata. May Charles X. deign to weigh these words, applied to the author of his race; in weeping for a brother, may he remember that he is King!
And among the higher strata of society, outside of these sacra privata, carelessness and negligence of the old State cults were steadily on the increase.
Old Didius was emperor just before my time; he gave all his estates to his daughter as soon as he assumed the purple. Poor lady! she did not enjoy them long; Severus confiscated the whole, not, however, for the benefit of the state, but of the res privata. They are so large in Africa alone, that, as you know, you are under a special procurator.
Omnia quae curant meminerunt, vadimonia constituta, quis sibi, cui ipsi debeant. 22 Quid iuris consulti, quid pontifices, quid augures, quid philosophi senes? Quam multa meminerunt! Manent ingenia senibus, modo permaneat studium et industria, neque ea solum claris et honoratis viris, sed in vita etiam privata et quieta.
Natives of the place, returning from Rome, or from provincial service elsewhere, had invested their gains in long leases of state lands, or of the farms belonging to the imperial res privata or privy purse, and had become virtual proprietors of the rich fields or beautiful gardens in which they had played as children.
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