Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/121

 CHAP. VIII. AUTIIOniTY IN THE FAMILY. 115 chief of the worship, and that the son shall merely aid him in his sacred functions. But nature requires this subordination only during a certain number of years ; religion requires more. Nature brings the son to his majority; religion does not grant it to him, according to ancient principles; the sacred fire is indivisible, and the same is true of property. The brothers do not separate at the death of their father; for a still stronger reason they could not separate from him during his life. In the rigor of primitive law, the sons remained attached to the father's hearth, and, consequently, subject to his authority; while he lived they were minors. We may suppose that this I'ule lasted only so long as the old domestic reli2;ion remained in full vi«:or. This- unlimited subjection of tiie son to the father disap- peared at an early day at Athens. It subsisted longer at Sparta, where a patrimony was always indivisible. At Home the old rule was scrupulously observed ; a Bou could never establish a separate hearth during his father's life; married even, and the father of child len, he was still under parental authority.' Besides, it was the same with the paternal as with the marital authority; its principle and condition were the domestic worship. A son born of concubinage was not placed under the authority of the father. Between his fuher and himself there existed no community of religion ; there was nothing, therefore, that conferred ' When Gaius said of the paternal power, Jus proprium est civium Romanorum, we must understand that in liis time the Roman law recognized this power only in the Roman citizen : this does not mean that the power had not existed before in other places, or that it had not been recognized by the law of olhet cities.