Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

WHEN CHRIST APPEARED.43throned on the Capitol with the god who dweltthere :"Nulla dies unquam memori vos eximet asvo,Dum domus JKnesQ Capitoli immobile saxumAccolet, imperiumque Pater Romanus habebit."The Eoman father is the Capitoline Jupiter.am not a king ; the only king of the Romans isJupiter, said the most royal of the race, and thefounder of her empire, when, seeing all prostrateat his feet, he put away reluctantly the diademoffered by his creature. Thus even he who hadseized the reality of power, who would have omenswhen he pleased, and whose will was his law, leftthe crown on the head of Jupiter. In Rome, allthrough her history " piety and patriotism werethe same feeling."40 When her empire becameworld-wide, this sort of devotion did not cease.Rome had long been deified; and the double importof her name41 expressed strength against thefoe without, and nourishment to the child within.She was agoddess clothed in mailto meet the enemy, and a mother offering herbosom to her citizens clustered around her. Andso in her new constitution, adapted for the world,her emperor too was deified, as the first of herchildren, her living representative, the embodimentof her force and love, the visible wielder ofer unseen power. All that is sacred in home40 Beugnot, Destruction du Paganisme, i. 8.41 (3o5/i?7, strength; ruma, a mother's breast.