Chapters 4 of Book 1,
1-2 of Book 2
We are not to suppose that this ancient religion resembled those founded when men became more enlightened. For a great number of centuries the human race has admitted no religious doctrine except on two conditions: first, that it proclaimed but one god; and, second, that it was addressed to all men, and was accessible to all, systematically rejecting no class or race. But this primitive religion fulfilled neither of these conditions. Not only did it not offer one only god to the adoration of men, but its gods did not accept the adoration of all men. They did not offer themselves as the gods of the human race. They did not even resemble Brahma, who was at least the god of one whole great caste, nor the Panhellenian Zeus, who was the god of an entire nation. In this primitive religion each god could be adored only by one family. Religion was purely domestic.
We must illustrate this important point; otherwise the intimate relation that existed between this ancient religion and the constitution of the Greek and Roman family may not be fully understood.
The worship of the dead in no way resembled the Christian worship of the saints. One of the first rules of this worship was, that it could be offered by each family only to those deceased persons who belonged to it by blood. The funeral obsequies could be religiously performed only by the nearest relative. As to the funeral meal, which was renewed at stated seasons, the family alone had a right to take part in it, and every stranger was strictly excluded. They believed that the dead ancestor accepted no offerings save from his own family; he desired no worship save from his own descendants. The presence of one who was not of the family disturbed the rest of the manes [souls of the dead]. The law, therefore, forbade a stranger to approach a tomb. To touch a tomb with the foot, even by change, was an impious act, after which the guilty one was expected to pacify the dead and purify himself.
The worship of the dead was nothing more than the worship of ancestors. Lucian, while ridiculing common beliefs, explains them clearly to use when he says the man who has died without leaving a son, receives no offerings, and is exposed to perpetual hunger.
In India, as in Greece, an offering could be made to a dead person only by one who had descended from him. The law of the Hindus, like Athenian law, forbade a stranger, even if he were a friend, to be invited to the funeral banquet. It was so necessary that these banquets should be offered by the descendants of the dead, and not by others, that the manes, in their resting-place, were supposed often to pronounce this wish: "May there be successively born of our line sons who, in all coming time, may offer us rice, boiled in milk, honey, and clarified butter."
Hence it was, that, in Greece and Rome, as in India, it was the son's duty to make the libations and the sacrifices to the manes of his father and of all his ancestors. To fail in this duty was to commit the grossest act of impiety possible, since the interruption of this worship caused the dead to fall from their happy state. This negligence was nothing less than the crime of parricide, multiplied as many times as there were ancestors in the family.
[This puts a whole new twist to the Focus on the Family nonsense, doesn't it!]
There were neither uniform rules nor a common ritual for this domestic religion. Each family was most completely independent. No external power had the right to regulate either the ceremony or the creed. There was no other priest than the father: as a priest, he knew no hierarchy. The pontifex of Rome, or the archon of Athens, might, indeed, ascertain if the father of a family performed all his religious ceremonies; but he had no right to order the least modification of them. Every family had its ceremonies, which were peculiar to itself, its particular celebrations, its formulas of prayer, its hymns. The father, sole interpreter and sole priest of his religion, alone had the right to teach it, and could teach it only to his son.
Thus religion dwelt not in temples, but in the house...It grew up spontaneously in the human mind; its cradle was the family; each family created its own gods.
But we must notice this peculiarity - that the domestic religion was transmitted only from male to male. This was owing, no doubt, to the idea that generation was due entirely to the males. The belief of primitive ages, as we find it in the Vedas, and as we find vestiges of it in all Greek and Roman law, was that the reproductive power resided exclusively in the father. The father alone possessed the mysterious principle of existence, and transmitted the spark of life. From this old notion it followed that the domestic worship always passed from male to male; that a woman particapted in it only through her father or her husband; and, finally, that after death women had not the same part as men in the worship and the ceremonies of the funeral meal. Still other important consequences in private law and in the constitution of the family resulted form this: we shall see them as we proceed.
Chapter 1 of Book 2
If we transport ourselves in thought to those ancient generations of men, we find in each house an altar, and around this altar the family assembled. The family meets every morning to address its first prayers to the sacred fire, and in the evening to invoke it for a last time. In the course of the day the members are once more assembled near the fire for the meal, of which they partake piously after prayer and libation. In all these religious acts, hymns, which their father have handed down, are sung in common by the family.
Outside the house, near at hand, in a neighboring field, there is a tomb - the second home of this family. There several generations of ancestors repose together; death has not separated them. They remain grouped in this second existence, and continue to form an indissoluble family.
Generation alone was not the foundation of the ancient family. What proves this is, that the sister did not bear the same relation to the family as the brother; that the emancipated son and the married daughter ceased completely to form a part of the family; and, in fine, several other important provisions of the Greek and Roman laws, that we shall have occasion to examine farther along.
The father may have affection for his daughter, but he cannot will her his property. The laws of succession - that is to say, those laws which most faithfully reflect the ideas that men had of the family - are in open contradiction both with the order of birth and with natural affection.
We shall see farther on that the authority of the father or husband, far from having been a first cause, was itself an effect; it was derived from religion, and was established by religion. Superior strength, therefore, was not the principle that established the family.
The members of the ancient family were united by something more powerful than birth, affection, or physical strength; this was the religion of the sacred fire, and of dead ancestors. This caused the family to form a single body, both in this life and in the next. The ancient family was a religious rather than a natural association..Religion, it is true, did not create the family; but certainly it gave the family its rules; and hence it comes that the constitution of the ancient family was so different from what it would have been if it had owed its foundation to natural affection.
The ancient Greek language has a very significant word to designate a family. It is a word which signifies, literally, that which is near a hearth. A family was a group of persons whom religion permitted to invoke the same sacred fire, and to offer the funeral repast to the same ancestors.
Chapter 2
Two families live side by side; but they have different gods. In one, a young daughter takes a part, from her infancy, in the religion of her father; she invokes his sacred fire; every day she offers it libations. She surrounds it with flowers and garlands and festal days. She asks its protection, and returns thanks for its favors. This paternal fire is her god. Let a young man of the neighboring family ask her in marriage, and something more is at stake than to pass from one house to the other. She must abandon the paternal fire, and henceforth invoke that of the husband. She must abandon her religion, practice other rites, and pronounce other prayers. She must give up the god of her infancy, and put herself under the protection of a god whom she knows not. Let her not hope to remain faithful to the one while honoring the other; for in this religion it is an immutable principle that the same person cannot invoke two sacred fires or two series of ancestors. "From the hour of marriage," says one of the ancients, "the wife has no longer anything in common with the domestic religion of her fathers; she sacrifices at the hearth of her husband." (Stephen of Byzantium)
Now, the religion that created marriage was not that of Jupiter, or of Juno, or of the other gods of Olympus. The ceremony did not take place in a temple; it was performed in a house, and the domestic god presided. When the religion of the gods of the sky became preponderant, men could not help invoking them also in the prayers of marriage, it is true; it even became habitual to go to the temple before the marriage, and offer sacrifices to these gods. These sacrifices were called the preludes of marriage; but the principal and essential part of the ceremony always took place before the domestic hearth.
Among the Greeks the marriage ceremony consisted, so to speak, of three acts. The first took place before the hearth of the father; the third before the hearth of the husband; the second was the passage from the one to the other.
The institution of sacred marriage must be as old in the Indo-European race as the domestic religion; for the one could not exist without the other. This religion taught man that the conjugal union was something more than relation of the sexes and a fleeting affection, and united man and wife by the powerful bond of the same worship and the same belief. The marriage ceremony, too, was so solemn, and produced effects so grave, that it is not surprising that these men did not think it permitted or possible to have more than one wife in each house. Such a religion could not admit of polygamy...Divorce was almost impossible
, thanks a lot for sharing, and of course it's up to you but why not sharing your personal interpretations in the light of your knowledge as well?, this can be helpful to all of us, don't you agree?, after all there must be something behind your selections ;)
