Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/59

 CtlAP n. MARRIAGE. 63 CHAPTER II. Marriage. The first institution that the domestio religion estab- lished, probably, was maiiiage. We must reiDark that ihis worship of the sacred fire and of ancestors, which was transmitted from male to male, did not belong, after all, exclusively to man ; woman bad a part in it. As a daughter, she took part in the religious acts of her father; as a wife, in those of her husband. From this alone we see the essential character of the conjugal unioKvamong the ancients. Two families live side by side; but they have different gods. In one, a young daughter takes a part, from her infancy, in the religion of her i'ather; she invokes Ins sacred fire; every day she offers it libations. She surrounds it with flowers and garlands on festal days. She asks its pro- tection, and returns thanks for its favors. This paternal fire is lier god. Let a young man of the neighboring family ask her in marriage, and something more is at stake than to pass from one house to the other. She must abandon the ])aternal fire, and henceforth invoke that of the husband. She must abandon her religion, practise other rites, and pronounce other prayers. Slie must give up the god of her infmcy, and put iierself under the protection of a god whom she knows not. Let her not hope to remain fnithful to the one wliile honoring the other; for in this religion it is an im- mutable principle that the same person cannot invoke two sacred fires or two series of ancestors. "From the