Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/122

 116 THE FAMILY. BOOK II. authority upon the one niul commnndcd obedience of the otlier. Paternity, of itself, gave the father no rights. Thanks to the domestic religion, the family was a small organized body; a little society, which had its (hief and its government. Nothing in modern society can give us an idea of this paternal authority. In prim- itive antiquity the father is not alone the strong man, the protector who has power to command obedience ; he is the priest, he is lieir to the liearth, the continuator of the ancestors, the parent stock of the descendants, the depositary of the mysterious rites of the worship, and of the sacred formulas of prayer. The Avholo religion resides in him. The very name by which he is called — pater — con- tains in itself some curious information. Tiie word is the same in Greek, in Latin, and in Sanskrit; from which we mny conclude that this word dates from a time when the Hellenes, the Italians, and the Hindus still lived together in Central Asia. What was its signification, and what idea did it then present to the minds of men? We can discover this; for the word has preserved its primary signification in the formulas of religious langunge and in those of judicial language. When the ancients, invoking Jupiter, called him pater homiimm deorumqiie, they did not intend to say thnt Jupiter was the father of gods and men, for they never considered hira as such ; they believed, on the contrary, that the human race existed before liim. The some title of pater was given to Neptune, to Apollo, to Bac- chus, to Vulcan, and to Pluto. These, assuredly, men never considered as their i'atheis; so, too, the title of mater w'cis n]y)Vie( to Minerva, Diana, and Vesta, who were reputed three virgin goddesses. In judicial Ian-