Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/78

 72 THE FAMILY. BOOK II» offer sacrifices to the sacred fire was transmitted only from male to male, and that the worship of the dead was addressed to the ascendants in tiie male line only. It followed from this rule that one could not be related through females. In the opinion of those ancient gen- erations, a female transmitted neither being nor wor- ship. The son owed all to the father. Besides, one conld not belong to two families, or invoke two fires; the son, therefore, had no other religion or other family than that of the iather.' How could there have been a maternal family? His mother herself, the day on Avhich the sacred rites of marriage were performed, had abso- lutely renounced her own family ; fi*om that time she had offered the funeral repast to her husband's ances- tors, as if she had become tlieir daughter, and she had no longer offered it to her own ancestors, because she was no longer considered as descended from them. She had preserved neither religious nor legal connection with the family in which she was born. For a still stronger reason her son had nothing in common with this family. The foundation of relationship was not birth ; it was worship. This is seen clearly in India. There the chief of the fimily, twice each month, offers the funeral repast; he presents a cake to the manes of his father, another to his paternal grandfather, a third to his great- grandtalher; never to those from whom he is descended on the mother's side, neither to his mother, nor to his mother's father. Afterwards, ascending still higher, but always in the same line, he makes an offering to fourth, fifth, and sixth ascendant. The oflTering to these last is ^ Patiis, non mairis, familiam sequitur. Digest, 50, tit IG, § 196.