Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/118

 112 TUE FAMILY. , BOOK li. admitted in the primitive age of these peoples, Avhich exercised its empire over their intelligence and their wills. A family was composed of a fiither, a mother, chil- dren, and slaves. This group, small as it was, required discipline. To whom, then, belonged the chief author- ity? To the father? No. There is in every house sometliing that is above the father himself. It is the domestic religion ; it is that god whom the Greeks called the hearth-master, — lana Slononuc^ — whom the Romans called Z,ar familiaris. This divinity of the interior, or, what amounts to the same thing, the belief that is in tl)e human soul, is the least doubtful author- ity. This is what fixed rank in the family. The fiither ranks first in presence of the sacred fire. Pie lights it, and supports it ; he is its priest. In all religious acts his functions are the highest ; he slays the victim, his mouth pronounces the formula of prayer which is to draw upon him and his the protection of the gods. The family and the worship are j^erpctuated through him; he represents, himself alone, the whole series of ancestors, and from him are to proceed the entire series of descendants. Upon him rests the do- mestic worship ; he can almost say, like the Hindu, "I am the god." When death shall come, he Avill be a divine being wliom his descendants will invoke. This religion did not place woman in so high a rank. The wife takes part in the religious acts, indeed, but slie is not the mistress of the hearth. She does not derive her religion from her birth. Slie was initiated into it at her marriage. She has learned from her husband the prayer that she pronounces. She does not represent the anccstoi'S, since she is not descended from them. She herself will not become an ancestor;