Abraham and Abimelech found that their followers were quarreling over the boundary line between their respective domains on the borders of the Negeb. Abraham claimed the well at Beer-sheba as his by right, but the servants of Abimelech forcibly took possession of it. So the two chieftains met and agreed upon a border line, and made a covenant with accompanying sacrifices. “And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba” as his border landmark, “and called there on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God.”[[479]] Border landmarks were in the form of a pillar, a tree, a heap, or a stele, in Oriental countries generally.

When Jacob and Laban agreed to part in peace after their stormy meeting in Gilead, they set up a heap of stones and a stone pillar as a monument of witness of their mutual covenant, and as a landmark of their agreed territorial boundary. This memorial of their covenant was called “Galeed,” or “Witness Heap,” and “Mizpah,” or “Watch Tower.” “And Laban said to Jacob, Behold this heap, and behold the pillar, which I have set betwixt me and thee. This heap be witness, and the pillar be witness, that I will not pass over this heap to thee, and that thou shalt not pass over this heap and this pillar unto me, for harm. The God of Abraham, and the God of Nahor, the God [or, gods] of their father, judge betwixt us.”[[480]] The new boundary mark was a token of a sacred covenant.

In classic literature and customs the sacred boundary landmark is prominent as devoted to, or as representing, various deities, at different times. Zeus and Hermes among the Greeks; Jupiter, Mercury, Silvanus, and Terminus, among the Romans, are sometimes interchangeably referred to in this connection. The legends and symbols employed seem to indicate that life and its transmission took their start at the threshold boundary, and therefore a pillar or a phallus marked every new beginning along a road or at a territorial boundary.

An image of Zeus, or Jupiter, was sometimes employed as a boundary landmark, and an image of Hermes, or Mercury, was at the starting-point of a road, and again at various points along the road. Zeus, or Jupiter, was chief of gods as the arbiter of life. Hermes, or Mercury, was earliest known as the fertilizing god of earth, and hence was the promoter of all forms of life, as guardian of flocks, fish, fields, and fruits. He also guarded those who went out from the threshold. Sacrifices were offered to him by Athenian generals as they started on their expeditions. He was even spoken of as the inventor of sacrifices and the promoter of commerce and of enrichment.[[481]]

Of Terminus, Ovid say: “When the night shall have passed away [and the threshold of a new day is to be crossed], let the god who by his landmark divides the fields be worshiped with the accustomed honors. Terminus,[[482]] whether thou art a stone, or whether a stock sunk deep in the field by the ancients, yet even in this form thou dost possess divinity.”[[483]] This symbol of Terminus was regularly “sprinkled with the blood of a slain lamb,” in recognition of its sacredness.

It is said that Numa, the second king of Rome, who was revered by the Romans as the author of their whole system of religious worship, directed that every one should mark the boundaries of his landed property by stones consecrated to Jupiter, and that yearly sacrifices should be offered at these boundary stones, at the festival of the Terminalia.[[484]] At this festival the two owners of adjacent property crowned the statue or stone pillar with garlands, and raised a rude altar, on which they offered up corn, honeycombs, and wine, and sacrificed a lamb or a sucking pig, with accompanying praises to the god.[[485]]

Silvanus also was a god of the boundary. He was represented by a tree grove, as Terminus was by a pillar, and offerings of fruit, grain, and milk, and of pigs, were made to him. When he would be guarded against as a source of evil in a home, the protectors of the inmates would perform certain ceremonies at the threshold of the house.

A tree, and sometimes a grove, was the sacred landmark of a village boundary in primitive lands. Such trees and groves are still to be found in Equatorial Africa. Describing some of these in Zinga and its vicinity, Stanley expresses surprise that they have so long remained untouched in “a country left to the haphazard care of patriarchal chiefs ignorant of written laws.”[[486]] But reverence for a threshold landmark seems to be in the very nature of a primitive people, as truly as any primitive sentiment; and sentiment is in itself a dominant law.

At the boundary line between two villages in Samoa, in olden time, there were two stones said to have been two living beings. When any quarrel arose, those engaged in it were told, “Go and settle it at the stones;” and they went to those boundary line stones and fought out their contest.[[487]]

Trees and stone pillars are still known as boundary landmarks between parishes and townships in Europe and America, as in Asia, Africa, and Polynesia in more primitive days; and their importance is recognized as peculiar, even if not always absolutely sacred. The annual custom of “beating the bounds” of a parish by the parish authorities survives in some parts of England to-day. A procession makes the circuit of the parish boundary, under the care of a “select vestryman,” or other parish official, halting at every landmark to identify it and carefully to observe its location.