Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/77

 OflAP. V. OF KINSHIP. 71 being thus assured, he might leave it; but, in this case, he severed all the ties that bound him to his own son.' Emancipation corresponded, as a correlative, to adop- tion. In order that a son might enter a new family, it was necessary that he slioukl be able to leave the old ; that is to say, that he should be emancipated from its religion.* The principal effect of emancipation was the renunciation of the worship of the family in which one was born. The Romans designated this act by the very significant name of sacrorum detestatio.^ CHAPTER V. Of Kinship. Of what the Romans called Agnation. Plato says that kinship is the community of the same domestic gods.* When Demosthenes wishes to prove that two men are relatives, he shows that they practise the same religious rites, and offer the funeral repast at the same tomb. Indeed, it was the domestic religion that constituted relationship. Two men could call themselves relatives when they had the same gods, the same sacred fire, and the same funeral repast. Now, we have already observed that the right to ' Isaeus, VI. 44; X. 11. Demosthenes, against Leochares. Antiphon., Frag., 15. Comp. Laws of Manu, IX. 142. iret prius se abdicarei ab ea in qua naius fuerai. Servius, ad JEn., II. 1.^6. =» Aulus Gellius, XV. 27. ■• Plato, Laws, V. p. 729.
 * Consuetudo apud antiquos fuit ut qui in familiam trans-