“It is for the virtue of hospitality (observes Goguet, Origin of Laws, etc. vol. i. book vi. ch. iv.), that the primitive times are chiefly famed. But, in my opinion, hospitality was then exercised, not so much from generosity and greatness of soul, as from necessity. Common interest probably gave rise to that custom. In remote antiquity, there were few or no public inns: they entertained strangers, in order that they might render them the same service, if they happened to travel into their country. Hospitality was reciprocal. When they received strangers into their houses, they acquired a right of being received into theirs again. This right was regarded by the ancients as sacred and inviolable, and extended not only to those who had acquired it, but to their children and posterity. Besides, hospitality in these times could not be attended with much expense: men travelled but little. In a word, the modern Arabians prove that hospitality may consist with the greatest vices, and that this species of generosity is no decisive evidence of goodness of heart, or rectitude of manners.” The book of Genesis, amidst many other features of resemblance to the Homeric manners, presents that of ready and exuberant hospitality to the stranger. They are the instinctive manifestations of human sociality, standing at first alone, and for that reason appearing to possess a greater tutelary force than really belongs to them,—beneficent, indeed, in a high degree, with reference to their own appropriate period, but serving as a very imperfect compensation for the impotence of the magistrate, and for the absence of any all-pervading sympathy or sense of obligation between man and man. We best appreciate their importance when we compare the Homeric society with that of barbarians like the Thracians, who tattooed their bodies, as the mark of a generous lineage,—sold their children for export as slaves,—considered robbery, not merely as one admissible occupation among others, but as the only honorable mode of life; agriculture being held contemptible,—and above all, delighted in the shedding of blood as a luxury. Such were the Thracians in the days of Herodotus and Thucydidês: and the Homeric society forms a mean term between that which these two historians yet saw in Thrace, and that which they witnessed among their own civilized countrymen.[145] [145] Respecting the Thracians, compare Herodot. v. 11; Thucydid. vii. 29-30. The expression of the latter historian is remarkable,—τὸ δὲ γένος τῶν Θρᾳκῶν, ὁμοῖα τοῖς μάλιστα τοῦ βαρβαρικοῦ, ~ἐν ᾧ ἂν θαρσήσῃ, φονικώτατόν ἐστι~. Compare Herodot. viii. 116; the cruelty of the Thracian king of the Bisaltæ towards his own sons.