There is a trace of this custom of besiegers, even in Old Testament times, in the injunctions to Israel with reference to its warfares: “When thou drawest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it [proffer quarter]. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open [the gates] unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall become tributary unto thee, and shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: and when the Lord thy God delivereth it into thine hand, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword.”[693] It has been suggested on a former page,[694] but perhaps not sufficiently explained, that this idea of subjecting one’s self to the covenant obligations of citizenship by passing through the city gates, over the threshold, had to do with the Grecian custom of welcoming back to his own city the victor in the Olympian games through a breach in the walls, instead of through the gate. The meaning of this Greek custom (continued in Rome) was not clear in the days of Plutarch, and he, in seeking to account for it, suggests that it may have been intended to show that a city having such men among its citizens needed no walls of defense.[695] But, as they rebuilt their walls after the entrance of the victor, this explanation is not satisfactory. The world-wide recognition of the covenant obligations of a passage through a gate over the threshold is a more satisfactory explanation. If the victor, on returning in triumph from the games, were to enter his city through the gates, like any other citizen, he would be subject to the laws of the city as a citizen or a guest; but if the city would recognize him as a conqueror, at home as well as at Olympia, they would let him come in through a breach in the walls. In this act the citizens nominally submitted themselves to him; and a city thus entered, and, as it were, captured, often felt that it received more honor from its victor than it could confer upon him.[696] ----- Footnote 688: Matt. 6 : 19; also Matt. 6 : 20. Footnote 689: Luke 12 : 39; also Matt. 24 : 43; Exod. 22 : 2; Ezek. 12 : 2–7. Footnote 690: See The Sunday School Times for March 7, 1896. Footnote 691: The Rev. William Ewing, in The Sunday School Times for March 7, 1896. Footnote 692: John 10 : 1, 10. Footnote 693: Deut. 20 : 10–13. Footnote 694: See pp. 5–7, _supra_. Footnote 695: Plutarch, _Symp._, Bk. ii, Quest. 5, § 2. Footnote 696: See Smith’s _Dict. of Greek and Roman Antiq._, s. vv. “Athletæ,” and “Olympic Games;” Gardner’s _New Chapters in Greek History_, pp. 297–302. ----- DOORKEEPER, AND CARRIER.