Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/107

 CHAP. VII. THE EIGHT OF SUCCESSION. 101 establisnod oetween two men the religious relation which permitted one to continue the worship of the other. What is called relationship, as we have seen above, was nothing more than the expression of this relation. One was a relative because he had the same worship, the same original sacred fire, the same ances- tors. But one was not a lelative because he had the same mother ; religion did not admit of kinship through women. The children of two sisters, or of a sister and a brother, had no bond of kinship between them, and belonged neither to the same domestic religion nor to the same family. These principles regulated the order of succession. If a man, having lost his son and his daughter, left only grandchildren after him, his son's sou inherited, but not his daughter's son. In default of descendants, he had as an heir his brother, not his sister, the son of his brother, not the son of his sister. In default of brotliers and nephews, it Avas necessary to go np in tiie series of ascendants of the deceased, always in the male line, until a branch of the family was found that was de- tached through a male ; then to re-desccnd in this branch from male to male, until a living man was found ; this was the heir. These rules were in force equally among the Hindus, the Greeks, and the Romans. In India "the inherit- ance belongs to the nearest sapinda; in default of a sapinda, to the samanodaca." ' Now, we have seen that the relationship which these two words expressed was the religious relationship, or the relationship through the males, and corresponded to the Roman agnation. Here, again, is the l.iw of Athens: "If a man dies ' Laws of Mann, IX. ISG, 187.