Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/133

 CHAP. IX. MORALS OF THB ANCIENT FAMILY. 127 that the sacred fire should be transmitted from father to son, and adultery disturbed the order of birth. An- other rule was, that the tomb should contain only mem- bers of the family ; bat the son born of adultery was a stranger. If he was buried in the tomb, all the princi- ples of the religion were violated, the worship defiled, the sacred fire became impure; every offering at the tomb became an act of impiety. Worse still, by adultery the series of descendants was broken ; the family, even though living men knew it not, became extinct, and there was no more divine happiness for the ancestors. The Hindu also says, " The son born of adultery annihilates in this world and in the next the offerings made to the manes.* Here is the reason that the laws of Greece and Rome give the father the right to reject the child just born. Here, too, is the reason that they are so rigor- ous, so inexorable, against adultery. At Athens the husband is allowed to kill the guilty one. At Rome the husband, as the wife's judge, condemns her to death. This religion was so severe that a man had not even the right to pardon completely, and that he was forced at least to repudiate his wife.' These, then, are the first moral and domestic laws discovered and sanctioned. Here is, besides the nat- ural sentiment — an imperious religion, which tells the husband and wife that they are united forever, and • Laws of Manu, III. 175. ity condemned adultery, it did not reprove incest; religion authorized it. The prohibitions relative to marriage were the reverse of ours. One might marry his sister (Demosthenes, in NecBr., 22 ; Corn. Nepos., proaemium ; id., Life of Cimon ; Minu- cius Felix, in Octavio), but it was forbidden, as a principle, to marry a woman of another city.
 * Demosthenes, in Near., 89. Though this primitive moral-