Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/240

 230 FIRE before the three curias united their fires into one could Home become powerful ; and Athens became a shining light to the world only, we are told, when the twelve tribes of Attica, led by Theseus, brought each its brand to the altar of Athene Polias. All Greece confederated, making Delphi its central hearth; and the islands congregated around Delos, whence the new fire was fetched every year. According to a not impossible theory, all architecture, public and private, sacred and profane, began with the erec tion of sacred sheds to protect the sacred fire, which abodes men dared to inhabit only after a length of time. For it must be borne in mind that fire was looked upon as a divinity. Wo are expressly told that Vesta had no image or statue even in her own temple, the Vestal fire being con sidered as the very goddess herself. The husbandmen who ate their repast before the hearth believed, as Ovid relates, that they sat in the presence of the gods themselves. The hearth fire was kept holy, its flame was to remain bright and pure. The minute and irksome prescriptions of the Zend-Avesta carried this feeling to the extreme: it was and it is still a widely spread belief that nothing unclean is to be thrown in the fire, that no indecent actions are to be committed before it. To spit in one s fire would be now considered in many places, in Albania, for example, as an unpardonable offence. The Galtchas of Ferghana, according to M. de Ujfalvy, are so reverential that they would not blow out a light lest they should render the flame impure with their breath ; and a similar peculiarity was observed by Wood in Badakshan and by KhanikorT among the Tadjiks of Bokhara. 1 In the course of time, the same reasons which made the tribe provide itself with a permanent fire made every family have its hearth. It would even be more accurate to say that the family, as it is called now-a-days, developed itself after the human couple and their children had their own fire-place, and not before. It is likely that at the outset only the higher aristocracy of chieftains, eumetrides or cnpatrides, were allowed to have a fire of their own, which was then equivalent to a private or family god. They kept it burning night and clay all the year round. As recently as the last generation, fires of such a character were rather numerous in the northern countries. 2 These lingering customs take us back to the time when every hearth was an altar. From the national Prytaneion a brand was given to each gens. When gentes grew out of the tribe, and subsequently when families grew out of the gentes, coals from the gentile sacrificial stone were given to every family. These three social organisms, the nation, the gens, the family, one merging into the other, had fire for their common symbol, and esteemed it as even the cause of their existence. The hearth was the very centre of the of a so-called eternul fire. From its hearth younger scions separating from tho parent stock take away a burning brand to their new home. The use of a common Prytaneion, of circular form, like tho Roman temple of Vesta, testified to the common origin of the North American Assinais and Maichas. The Mobiles, the Chippeways, the Natchez, had each a corporation of Vestals. If the Natchez let their lire die out, they were bound to renew it from the Mobiles. The Moquis, Pueblos, and Comanches had also their perpetual fires. The Red-skins discussed important affairs of state at the &quot;council fires,&quot; around which each sachem marched three times, turning to it all the sides of his person. &quot; It was a saying among our ancestors,&quot; said an Iroquois chief in 1753, &quot;that when the fire goes out at Onondoga&quot; the Delphi of the league &quot; we shall no longer be a people.&quot; 1 See Bulletin de la Soc. dcG cog., Paris, 1878, p. 489; Wood s Journey to Source of Oxus, 1872, p. 177. 2 The rich Westphalian farmers have still between their habitation and the stables the so-called Skorestein, where burns a constant fire, for which they have a superstitious regard. On the banks of the Sieg it was the custom, as recently as the year 1855, to insert a large mass of oak, usually a stump with its roots, in a niche opposite the pot- hanger. The block smouldered slowly, and was intended to last the whole year, from Christinas to Christmas, when its remains were ground to powder and strewn on the fields to insure their fertility. house, as the regia was tho sacred centre of Rome and the Roman commonwealth; around the regia the civic and politic institutions developed themselves, and around the hearth the family grew slowly into shape and power. As already observed, the Prytaneion was an altar to the genius of the commonwealth, the abode of the nation s heroic ancestors. Its exact counterpart was the gentile hearth, owned by the gens at large and its dependent families. When the gentes broke asunder, every family became possessed likewise of an altar to its particular &quot;Penates&quot; and &quot;Lares,&quot; or sacred fathers. These fathers were not mere ancestors, or grandparents, as we hold then now to be, but the constant progenitors ; not only were they believed to have begotten children in a former age, but also to go on begetting them constantly through succeeding generations. Procreators and protectors as well, they were the source of blessing at the same time as the source of ex istence. Called gods, &quot; theoi patrooi, yenethtioi, enyeneis, sunaimoi,&quot; they were in fact the gods of the household, but gods of the same kin and blood as their descendants. No oath was held more sacred than the one which a man swore by his own hearth, no prayer more readily granted than that which was coupled with a wish for the welfare of the hearth. The hearth had a recognized right of asylum, which is yet in full vigour in many countries. But it was above all the throne of the &quot; paterfamilias,&quot; the stronghold of his dominion. The proud saying of the Englishman that his home is his castle is but an attenuated remnant of the feeling which animated the chiefs of the Vedic, the Greek, and the Italian gentes. Such a man was the king absolute over his household ; he wielded the power of life and death over all his subordinates, cattle, slaves, children, wife or wives ; he was the priest of his altar, the manager and ex pounder of all divine things, elevated above the standard of common mortals. He alone in his kingdom could, if need were, make a new fire, not with a vulgar flint and iron, but by the solemn mode of rubbing together two sacred twig?. In this way all Greek hearths were provided with new fires when the ancient ones had been sullied by the look of the hated Persian invaders. Beside the hearth, the second place, at least, was due to the wife and mother ; and as time went on her influence continued to increase. 3 Identity of Fire and Soul in Ancient Belief. The sun, as the source of heat, gives life to earth ; and it was natu ral to suppose that the hearth, &quot; the sun in the house/ as the younger Edda calls it, radiated life likewise. There fore it was made the seat of the Lares and Penates, rr ancestors, a dwelling place for the deceased, where a stock of souls ready to enter existence by new births was main tained. The famous Roman legend of Servius Tullius, whom Plutarch and other writers report to have been pro created in the ashes of the hearth by the Lares themselves, is a curious illustration of this belief. A sepulchral picture at Orvieto represents a double phallus protruding from the flame of a hearth, on which a libation is being poured. The Vedas taught that the hearth-fire was cosubstantial with the cause of generation. Hence care was taken to preserve the purity of descent in the kin by preserving tho 3 The traveller Pallas was told by the Mongol populations which he visited that a woman might indulge in the vilest abuse and insult, and no one would dare to touch her, so long as she stood between the bed and the fire-place. In the Vedas we see that the new wife underwent some sort of consecration by walking thrice around the new hearth-place, and stretching her hand into the flames while she was being sprinkk-d over with lustral water. In Germany and Slav countries, the bride, as she comes from church and enters her new house, bows to the lire burning on the hearth, walks thrice round it, burns three of her hairs, and binds a red string round her body. What is no more done by the mistress is still done to her servants in Germany, who, MS they come in, are made to run round the kitchen fire, arc touched with soot, and have their bare feet sprinkled with ashes.