[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, 99-101, ii. 26, 28-30; (Crossley's Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Nos. 37, 125, 132, 134).
[986] Arnobius, adv. Nationes, i. 3.
[987] Ib. ii. 6.
[988] Tertull., ad Martyr. c. 3. Cp. de Corona Militiae, c. 11.