On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay Part 2

5. Heroes.

6. Ancestral G.o.ds.

7. _Living Parents_, "to whom we have to pay the greatest and oldest of all debts: in property, in person, in soul; paying the debts due to them for the care and travail which they bestowed on us of old in the days of our infancy, and which we are now to pay back to them when they are old and in the extremity of their need."

(M24) The candidates for the archonship were asked, among other things, whether they treated their parents properly.(31) It was only in case of some indelible stain, such as wife-murder, that the debt of maintenance of the parent was cancelled.(32) Yet even when the father had lost his right of maintenance by crime or foul treatment, the son was still bound to bury him when he died and to perform all the customary rites at his tomb.(33)

"Is it not," says Isaeus, "a most unholy thing, if a man, without having done any of the customary rites due to the dead, yet expects to take the inheritance of the dead man's property?"(34)

(M25) The duty of maintenance of the parent thus extended even beyond the tomb, and this retrospective att.i.tude of the individual gives us the clue to his position of responsibility also with regard to posterity.

The strongest representation possible of this att.i.tude is given in the _Ordinances of Manu_, where it is stated that a man "goes to h.e.l.l" who has no son to offer at his death the funeral cake.

(M26) "No world of heaven exists for one not possessed of a son." The debt, owed by the living member of a family to his _manes_, was to provide a successor to perform the rites necessary to them after his own death.

"By means of the eldest son, as soon as he is born, a man becomes possessed of a son and is thus cleared of his debt to the _manes_"

"A husband is born again on earth in his son."

"If among many brothers born of one father, _one_ should have a son, Manu said all those brothers would be possessed of sons by means of that son."

_i.e._ one representative was sufficient as regards the duties to the _manes_ in the house of the grandfather.

"Thro' a son one conquers worlds, thro' a son's son one attains endlessness, and through the son's son of a son one attains the world of the Sun."

"The sort of reward one gets on crossing the water by means of bad boats is the sort of reward one gets on crossing the darkness (to the next world) by means of bad sons."(35)

(M27) Plato expresses the same feeling in the _Laws_:(36)

"After a sort the human race naturally partakes of immortality, of which all men have the greatest desire implanted in them; for the desire of every man that he may become famous, and not lie in the grave without a name, is only the love of continuance ... In this way they are immortal leaving [children's] children behind them, with whom they are one in the unity of generation. And for a man voluntarily to deprive himself of this gift of immortality, as he deliberately does who will not have a wife and children, is _impiety_."

The functions and duties of the individual towards his family and relations thus find their explanation in his position as link, between the past and the future, in the transmission to eternity of his family blood.

His duties to his ancestors began with the death of his father. He had at Athens to carry out the corpse, provide for the cremation, gather the remains of the burnt bones, with the a.s.sistance of the rest of the kindred,(37) and show respect to the dead by the usual form of shaving the head, wearing mourning clothes, and so on. Nine days after the funeral he must perform certain sacrifices and periodically after that visit the tombs and altars of his family in the family burying-place.(38) If he had occasion to perform military service, he must serve in the tribe and the deme of his parent (st?ate?e?? ?? t? f??? ?a? ?? t? d??).(39) Before he can enter into his inheritance he must fulfil all the ordinances inc.u.mbent on one in his position, and in the Gortyn Laws it is stated that an adopted heir cannot partake of the property of his adoptive father unless he undertakes the sacred duties of the house of the deceased.(40) Thus the right of ownership of the family estate rested always with the possession of the blood of the former owners; and such a representative demonstrated his right by stepping into his predecessor's shoes and by taking upon himself all responsibility for the fulfilment of the rites, thereafter to be performed to him also when he shall have been gathered to the majority of his family.

- 2. The Duty Of Providing Male Succession.

But however piously and carefully he performed his many duties to his ancestors, his work was only transitory and incomplete, unless he provided a successor to continue them after him into further generations.

(M28) The procreation of children was held to be of such importance at Sparta(41) that if a wife had no children, with the full knowledge of her husband she admitted some other citizen to her, and children born from such a union were reckoned as born to the continuation of her husband's family, without breach of the former relations of husband and wife.(42) This is the exact custom stated in the _Ordinances of Manu_ (ix. 59), where it is laid down that a wife can be "commissioned" by her husband to bear him a son, but she must only take a kinsman within certain degrees, whose connection with her ceases on the birth of one son.(43) Otherwise it was a man's duty to divorce a barren wife and take another. But he must divorce the first, and could not have two hearths or two wives.(44)

A curious instance of how this sentiment worked in practice in directly the opposite direction to our modern ideas, is mentioned in Herodotus.

Leaders of forlorn hopes nowadays would be inclined to pick out as comrades the unmarried men, as having least to sacrifice and fewest duties to forego. Whereas Leonidas, in choosing the 300 men to make their famous and fatal stand at Thermopylae, is stated to have selected all _fathers with sons living_.(45)

Hector is made to use this idea in somewhat similar manner. He encourages his soldiers with:-

"If a man fall fighting for his fatherland, it is no dishonourable thing: and his wife and his children left behind, and his ?????

and ?????? are unharmed, if the Achaians go but back to their own country."(46)

If the enemy are driven out, though he be killed himself, yet if he leave children behind, his household and their property will remain unharmed.

All about to die, says Isaeus, take thought not to leave their ?????

desolate (?????),(47) but that there shall be some one to carry the name of their house down to posterity, who shall perform all the customary rites at the tomb due to them also when they shall have joined the ranks of ancestors.(48)

Where children were reckoned of the tribe of their father and not of their mother, and where a woman was incapable of performing sacred rites, a male heir was necessary for the direct transmission of blood and property. Sons entered upon their inheritance immediately on the death of their father, nor had he the power to dispossess them in favour of others, whilst brothers, cousins, legatees, had always to prove their t.i.tle and procure judgment from the court in their favour.(49)

(M29) Failing sons however, the next descent lay through a daughter. Nor were her qualifications in herself complete or sufficient in theory to form the necessary link in the chain of succession. The next of kin male had to marry her with the property of which she was ?p???????;(50) but neither she nor he really possessed the property, and the sons born from the marriage succeeded thereto directly on attaining a certain age. The next of kin had in the meantime of course to represent his wife's father in all the religious observances, and was said to have power to live with the woman (?????? s??????sa? t? ???a???), but not to dispose of the property (?????? t?? ????t??);(51) the sons becoming ?????? t?? ????t??

at sixteen years old, and owing thence only maintenance (t??fe??) to their mother from the property.(52) The heiress was compelled to marry at a certain age and was adjudicated by law to the proper kinsman.(53)

Again an exact parallel is to be found in the _Ordinances of Manu_:-

"One who is without a son should, by the following rule, make his daughter provide him a son:-'The offspring which may be hers shall be for me the giver of offerings to the _manes_.' "

The whole property of a man is taken by this daughter's son,(54) and, by her bearing a son, _her father_ "becomes possessed of a son, who should give the funeral cake and take the property."(55)

If she die without a son, her husband would take (presumably by a sort of adoption).(56) But this would be perfectly natural, if, as in Greece, her husband was bound to be the next of kin and therefore heir failing issue from her.

(M30) At Athens it was part of the office of the archon to see that no ????? failed for want of representatives, to constrain a reluctant heiress to marry or to compel the next of kin to perform his duty. Plato(57) asks pardon for his imaginary legislator, if he shall be found to give the daughter of a man in marriage having regard only to the two conditions-nearness of kin, and the preservation of the property; disregarding, in his zeal for these, the further considerations, which the father himself might be expected to have had, with regard to the suitability of the match.(58)

(M31) A certain leniency was however allowed to the heiress who was unwilling to marry an obnoxious kinsman, and to the kinsman who had counterclaims upon him in his own house. Nevertheless the rules remained very strict. Isaeus states emphatically,(59) "Often have men been compelled by law to give up their properly wedded wives, owing to their becoming ?p??????? through the death of their brother to their father's property and having to marry the next of kin (t??? ????t?ta ??????)," to prevent the extinction of their father's house.

Manu warns those about to marry to be careful that their children shall not be required to continue their wives' father's family, to the desolation of their own.

"She who has not a brother ... let not a wise man marry her, through fear of the law about a daughter's son."(60)

Again Isaeus:-

"We, because of our nearness of kin, would have been compelled to maintain (????t??fe??) our aged grandfather and either ourselves marry Cleonymos' (our uncle's) daughters or give them away with their portions to others and all this our kinship, the laws, and _our shame_ would have compelled us to perform or incur the greatest penalties and the _utmost disgrace_."(61)