It must be reckoned no small achievement that the national religion of the Latins was able to carry out these and similar improvements.

But the civilizing effect of this law was still more important.

If a husband sold his wife, or a father sold his married son; if a child struck his father, or a daughter-in-law her father-in-law; if a patron violated his obligation to keep faith with his guest or dependent; if an unjust neighbour displaced a boundary-stone, or the thief laid hands by night on the grain entrusted to the common good faith; the burden of the curse of the gods lay thenceforth on the head of the offender.

Not that the person thus accursed (-sacer-) was outlawed; such an outlawry, inconsistent in its nature with all civil order, was only an exceptional occurrence--an aggravation of the religious curse in Rome at the time of the quarrels between the orders.

It was not the province of the individual burgess, or even of the wholly powerless priest, to carry into effect such a divine curse.