Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/74

 68 THE FAMILY. BOOK II. qualified to repent its prnyers ; lie lioiiored its ances- tors, and at a Inter period he would himself become nn honored ancestor. CHAPTER IV. Adoption and Emancipation. The duty of perpetuating the domestic worship was the foundation of the law of ado])tion among the ancients. The same religion which obliged a man to raarry, which pronounced a divorce in case of sterility, which, in case of impotence or of premature death, substituted a lelative in ))lace of the husband, still offered to a family one final resource to escape the so much dreaded misfortune of extinction; this resource was the right of adoption. " He to whom nature has denied a son can adopt one, so that the funeral cere- monies may not cease." Thus speaks the old legislator of the Hindus.' We have a curious plea of an Athe- nian orator in a case where the legitimacy of a son's adoption was contested. The defendant shows us first the motive for which one adopted a son, "Menecles," he says, "did not wish to die without children ; lie was desirous of leaving behind him some one to bury him, and in after time to jierform the cei-emonies of the funeral worship." He then goes on to show what will ha])pen if the tribunal annuls his adoption ; what will happen, not only to himself, but to the one who has adopted liim. Menecles is dead, and still it is the in terest of Menecles that is at stake. "If you annul my ' Laws of Manu, IX. 10.