Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/124

 118 TUE FAMILY. BOOK IL classes, according as we consider the father of a family as a religious cliief, as tlio master of the j^roperty, or as a judge. I. The father is the supreme chief of the domestic religion ; he regulates all the ceremonies of the wor- shp, as he understands them, or, rather, as he has seen his father perform them. No one contests his sacer- dotal supremacy. The city itself and its pontiffs can change nothing in his worship. As priest of the hearth he recognizes no superior. As religious chief, he is responsible for the perpetuity of the worship, and, consequently, for that of the fam- ily. Whatever affects this perpetuity, which is his first care and his first duty, depends upon him alone. From this flows a whole series of rights : — The right to recognize the child at its birth, or to reject it. This right is attributed to the father by the Greek laws,' as well as by those of Rome. Barbarous as this is, it is not contrary to the principles on which the family is founded. Even uncontested filiation is not sufticient to admit one into the sacred circle of the family; the consent of its chief, and an initiation into its worship, are necessary. So long as the child is not associated in the domestic religion, he is nothing to the father. The right to repudiate the wife, either in case of sterility, because the family must not become extinct, or in case of adultery, because the family and the de- scendants ought to be free from all debasement. The right to give his daughter in marriage — that is to say, to cede to another the power which he has over her. The right of marrying his son ; the marriage of the son concerns the perpetuity of the family. ' Herodotus, I. P9. Plutiirch, Alcib., 2Z; Agesilaus, 3.