ix. 8. 6; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 476;
Greenidge, _Roman Public Life_, p. 56.

[976] Lactantius iv. 3 (_de vera sapientia_).

[977] _Ib._ v. (_de Iustitia_) ch. 10.

[978] _Aen._ xi. 81.

[979] Marquardt, 145, note 5.

[980] _Aen._ xii. 648.

[981] Servius, _ad Aen._ xii. 648.

[982] The original meaning of _sanctus_ as applied to
things, _e.g._ walls and tombs, was probably
"inviolable"; Nettleship, _Contributions to Latin
Lexicography_, _s.v._ "sanctus," who also suggests a
connection between the word and the attitude of the
Roman towards his dead: thus Cicero in _Topica 90_
writes of _aequitas_ as consisting of three
parts,--_pietas_, _sanctitas_, and _iustitia_,--meaning
man's relation to the gods, the Manes, and his
fellow-men. Nettleship also quotes _Aen._ v. 80 (_salve
sancte parens_), Tibull. ii. 2. 6, and other passages,
which show that the word was specially used of the dead
and their belongings. But when used of persons living,
as frequently in the last century B.C., it expresses a
certain purity of life, not without a religious
tincture, which could not so well be expressed by any
other word, owing to the original meaning being that of
religious inviolability. Thus Cicero uses it in the 9th
Philippic of his old friend Sulpicius, one of the best
and purest men of his time; and long before Cicero, Cato
had used it of an obligation at once ethical and
religious: "Maiores _sanctius_ habuere defendi pupillos
quam clientem non fallere." It is interesting to notice
that it was used later on of Mithras and other oriental
deities (Cumont, _Mon. myst. Mithra_, i. p. 533; _Les
Religions orientales_, p. 289, note 45); in the case of
Mithras, at least, this meant that his life was pure,
and that he wished his worshippers to be pure also.

[983] Marquardt, p. 318, note 4; Mommsen, _Strafrecht_,
pp. 902, 1026. See also Greenidge, _Roman Public Life_,
p. 56; Festus, p. 347.

[984] Greenidge, _op. cit._ p. 154.

[985] Cumont, _Mysterien von Mithras_, p. 116 of the
German edition. See also De Marchi, _La Religione nella
vita privata_, vol. ii. 114. It may be worth noting that
the idea of life as the service of a soldier bound to
obedience by his oath is found also in Stoicism; see
Epictetus (_Arrian_), _Discourses_, i. 14, iii. 24,