As the hearth was the centre of the sanctity and reverence of the family, so the word οἶκος was the customary term to signify the smaller group of the composite γένος, consisting of a man and his immediate descendants. In the first place, the individual was absolutely committed to sacrifice all his personal feelings for the sake of the continuity of his οἶκος, and this was his supreme duty. But whereas several οἶκοι traced their descent from a common ancestor, a group of gradually diverging lines of descent were formed, sharing mutually the responsibility of the maintenance of continuity, and the privilege of inheritance and protection.
Before examining how far these parallel lines remained within the reach of claims of kinship, or how soon the reverence for the more immediate predecessors [pg 018] absorbed the memory of the more remote ancestor, it will be well to have a clear understanding of what the claims of kindred were, and how they affected the member of the οἶκος, in respect of his duties thereto.
Plato30 declares that honour should be given to:—
1. Olympian Gods.
2. Gods of the State.
3. Gods below.
4. Demons and Spirits.
5. Heroes.
6. Ancestral Gods.
7. Living Parents, “to whom we have to pay the greatest and oldest of all debts: in property, in person, in soul; paying the debts due to them for the care and travail which they bestowed on us of old in the days of our infancy, and which we are now to pay back to them when they are old and in the extremity of their need.”
The candidates for the archonship were asked, among other things, whether they treated their parents properly.31 It was only in case of some indelible stain, such as wife-murder, that the debt of maintenance of the parent was cancelled.32 Yet even when the father had lost his right of maintenance by crime or foul treatment, the son was still bound to bury him when he died and to perform all the customary rites at his tomb.33
[pg 019]“Is it not,” says Isaeus, “a most unholy thing, if a man, without having done any of the customary rites due to the dead, yet expects to take the inheritance of the dead man's property?”34
The duty of maintenance of the parent thus extended even beyond the tomb, and this retrospective attitude of the individual gives us the clue to his position of responsibility also with regard to posterity.
The strongest representation possible of this attitude is given in the Ordinances of Manu, where it is stated that a man “goes to hell” who has no son to offer at his death the funeral cake.
“No world of heaven exists for one not possessed of a son.” The debt, owed by the living member of a family to his manes, was to provide a successor to perform the rites necessary to them after his own death.
i.e. one representative was sufficient as regards the duties to the manes in the house of the grandfather.
Plato expresses the same feeling in the Laws:36
The functions and duties of the individual towards his family and relations thus find their explanation in his position as link, between the past and the future, in the transmission to eternity of his family blood.
His duties to his ancestors began with the death of his father. He had at Athens to carry out the corpse, provide for the cremation, gather the remains of the burnt bones, with the assistance of the rest of the kindred,37 and show respect to the dead by the usual form of shaving the head, wearing mourning clothes, and so on. Nine days after the funeral he must perform certain sacrifices and periodically after that visit the tombs and altars of his family in the family burying-place.38 If he had occasion to perform military service, he must serve in the tribe and the deme of his parent (στρατεύειν ἐν τῇ φυλῇ καὶ ἐν τῷ δήμῳ).39 Before he can enter into his inheritance he must fulfil all the ordinances incumbent on one in his position, and in the Gortyn Laws it is [pg 021] stated that an adopted heir cannot partake of the property of his adoptive father unless he undertakes the sacred duties of the house of the deceased.40 Thus the right of ownership of the family estate rested always with the possession of the blood of the former owners; and such a representative demonstrated his right by stepping into his predecessor's shoes and by taking upon himself all responsibility for the fulfilment of the rites, thereafter to be performed to him also when he shall have been gathered to the majority of his family.
But however piously and carefully he performed his many duties to his ancestors, his work was only transitory and incomplete, unless he provided a successor to continue them after him into further generations.
The procreation of children was held to be of such importance at Sparta41 that if a wife had no children, with the full knowledge of her husband she admitted some other citizen to her, and children born from such a union were reckoned as born to the continuation of her husband's family, without breach of the former relations of husband and wife.42 This is the exact custom stated in the Ordinances of Manu [pg 022] (ix. 59), where it is laid down that a wife can be “commissioned” by her husband to bear him a son, but she must only take a kinsman within certain degrees, whose connection with her ceases on the birth of one son.43 Otherwise it was a man's duty to divorce a barren wife and take another. But he must divorce the first, and could not have two hearths or two wives.44
A curious instance of how this sentiment worked in practice in directly the opposite direction to our modern ideas, is mentioned in Herodotus. Leaders of forlorn hopes nowadays would be inclined to pick out as comrades the unmarried men, as having least to sacrifice and fewest duties to forego. Whereas Leonidas, in choosing the 300 men to make their famous and fatal stand at Thermopylae, is stated to have selected all fathers with sons living.45
Hector is made to use this idea in somewhat similar manner. He encourages his soldiers with:—
If the enemy are driven out, though he be killed himself, yet if he leave children behind, his household and their property will remain unharmed.
All about to die, says Isaeus, take thought not to leave their οἶκος desolate (ἔρημος),47 but that there shall be some one to carry the name of their house [pg 023] down to posterity, who shall perform all the customary rites at the tomb due to them also when they shall have joined the ranks of ancestors.48
Where children were reckoned of the tribe of their father and not of their mother, and where a woman was incapable of performing sacred rites, a male heir was necessary for the direct transmission of blood and property. Sons entered upon their inheritance immediately on the death of their father, nor had he the power to dispossess them in favour of others, whilst brothers, cousins, legatees, had always to prove their title and procure judgment from the court in their favour.49
Failing sons however, the next descent lay through a daughter. Nor were her qualifications in herself complete or sufficient in theory to form the necessary link in the chain of succession. The next of kin male had to marry her with the property of which she was ἐπίκληρος;50 but neither she nor he really possessed the property, and the sons born from the marriage succeeded thereto directly on attaining a certain age. The next of kin had in the meantime of course to represent his wife's father in all the religious observances, and was said to have power to live with the woman (κύριος συνοικῆσαι τῇ γυναικί), but not to dispose of the property (κύριος τῶν χρημάτων);51 the sons becoming κύριοι τῶν χρημάτων at sixteen years old, and owing thence only maintenance (τρέφειν) to their mother from [pg 024] the property.52 The heiress was compelled to marry at a certain age and was adjudicated by law to the proper kinsman.53
Again an exact parallel is to be found in the Ordinances of Manu:—
The whole property of a man is taken by this daughter's son,54 and, by her bearing a son, her father “becomes possessed of a son, who should give the funeral cake and take the property.”55
If she die without a son, her husband would take (presumably by a sort of adoption).56 But this would be perfectly natural, if, as in Greece, her husband was bound to be the next of kin and therefore heir failing issue from her.
At Athens it was part of the office of the archon to see that no οἶκος failed for want of representatives, to constrain a reluctant heiress to marry or to compel the next of kin to perform his duty. Plato57 asks pardon for his imaginary legislator, if he shall be found to give the daughter of a man in marriage having regard only to the two conditions—nearness of kin, and the preservation of the property; disregarding, in his zeal for these, the further considerations, which the father himself might be expected [pg 025] to have had, with regard to the suitability of the match.58
A certain leniency was however allowed to the heiress who was unwilling to marry an obnoxious kinsman, and to the kinsman who had counterclaims upon him in his own house. Nevertheless the rules remained very strict. Isaeus states emphatically,59 “Often have men been compelled by law to give up their properly wedded wives, owing to their becoming ἐπίκληροι through the death of their brother to their father's property and having to marry the next of kin (τοῖς ἐγγυτάτα γένους),” to prevent the extinction of their father's house.
Manu warns those about to marry to be careful that their children shall not be required to continue their wives' father's family, to the desolation of their own.
Again Isaeus:—
In the laws of Gortyn very clear rules are laid [pg 026] down to be followed where there were difficulties in the way of the heiress marrying the next of kin.
There is also a statement made by Demosthenes63 that sounds as if it might have come from the Ordinances of Manu. It is there stated that if there were more than one heiress, only one need be dealt with in respect to providing succession, though all shared in the property.
The law of Gortyn goes on:—
Such pains were taken to find a representative [pg 027] for the deceased in his family, or at any rate in his tribe.64
The same questions seem to have arisen amongst the Israelites in the time of Moses.
The levirate, or marriage with deceased husband's brother, seems to have had no place in Greek family law. The wife was of no kin necessarily to the husband; and so it would not tend to strengthen the transmission of blood if the next of kin married the widow on taking the inheritance of his relative deceased without issue. The wife in Greek law could not inherit from her husband, whose property went to his father's or mother's relations; and only when it became a question of finding an heir to her son, and failing all near paternal kinsmen, could the [pg 028] inheritance pass through her, and then as the mother of her dead son, not as widow of her dead husband. Even then, being a woman, she had no right of enjoyment, only of transmission. She could only inherit on behalf of her issue by a second husband, and failing her issue the inheritance would pass to her brothers and so on. In Greece the claim upon the δαήρ (Latin levir) for marriage seems to have begun with his brother's daughter, not his brother's widow.
The childless widow on the death of her husband had to return to her own family or whoever of her kindred was guardian (κύριος) of her, and if she wished, be given again in marriage by him.65
The woman at Athens even after marriage always retained her κύριος or guardian,66 who was at once her protector and trustee. He was probably the head of the οἶκος to which she originally belonged—her next of kin—and had great power over her.67
A case there is68 where the heir to the property also takes the wife of the previous owner; but in this case the husband may have been κύριος of his own [pg 029] wife, and so could bequeath, or give her away to whomever he liked.69
In the Ordinances of Manu, the limitations of the levirate are very strictly defined.70 In the case of a man leaving a widow, she must not marry again, or she lost her place in heaven by his side.
But if she was childless, the next of kin of her husband must beget one son by her; he did not marry her, and his connection with her ceased on the birth of a son.
The laws of Manu otherwise are strict against the marriage of close relations; a restriction not found in Greece.
Isaeus71 mentions that it was thought quite natural for a man to marry his first cousin in order to concentrate the family blood, and prevent her dowry or whatever property might come to her from going outside his οἶκος, and we know that even marriage with a half-sister (not born of the same mother) was not forbidden.
There are more instances than one in Homer of a man marrying his aunt, or niece.
The nearest resemblance to the levirate in Greece is the occasional custom at Sparta, mentioned already, of a wife being “commissioned” to bear children by another man into the family of her husband. But this exists in Manu, side by side with the above-mentioned custom of levirate proper.
Among the Israelites, the levirate was in full force; the craving for continuance was the same as among the followers of Manu and the Greeks; and [pg 030] the custom with regard to heiresses is so vividly told that it is worth quoting at some length.
Such was the scorn felt for the man who refused to perform the duties of nearest kinsman. In the thirty-eighth chapter of Genesis is told the story of Tamar, the wife of Judah's eldest son who died childless. The second son's refusal to raise up seed to his brother because he knows that his own name will not be perpetuated thereby, but his brother's, meets with summary punishment. “And the thing that he did was evil in the sight of the Lord, and He slew him also.”72 Afterwards, when it was reported to her father-in-law that Tamar had a child by some one not of his family, he was exceedingly wroth, and said, “Bring her forth and let her be burnt.” Accordingly, after he had received his own “tokens” from her hand, [pg 031] his approval of her action, in her desire to perpetuate the name of her dead husband, is all the more striking, and shows how real such a claim as Tamar's was in the practice of those days, extreme though her action was felt to be. And Judah acknowledged his tokens and said, “She hath been more righteous than I: because that I gave her not to Shelah my [youngest] son.”
The statement of the customary procedure in Deuteronomy is very picturesquely illustrated and fulfilled in detail in the story of Ruth, who though only a daughter-in-law takes the position of heiress through a sort of adoption by her mother-in-law Naomi, on her refusal to go back to her own people. “Where thou goest, I will go: where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God. Where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried.” She accepts Naomi's hearth her kin, her religion, and finally her tomb.
Elimelech and his two sons dying in Moab, Naomi and both her daughters-in-law are left widows in a strange land. If Naomi had other sons, upon them would have devolved the duty of taking Orpah and Ruth to wife. But Naomi declares herself73 too old to marry again and be the mother of sons, and implores her daughters-in-law to return to their own people in Moab, where she hopes they will start afresh with new husbands, a course which seems always to have been open to wives in tribal communities. Orpah does so, but Ruth elects to remain with Naomi, and returning with her to Bethlehem takes her chance [pg 032] among the kindred of Elimelech. Happening to arrive at Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest, it so chances that Ruth goes forth to glean upon that part of the open field which belonged to Boaz—a rich man of the συγγενία of Elimelech, who, having heard of her devotion to Naomi and the house of his late kinsmen, protects her from possible insult from strangers and treats her richly. On her return home Naomi informs her that Boaz is of their next of kin (τῶν ἀγχιστευόντων)74 whose place it was to redeem property sold or lost by a kinsman. This duty is thus set forth in Leviticus:—
An instance of it in practice is given in Jeremiah.
But on Ruth's applying to Boaz, he informs her that though he is ἀγχιστεύς, i.e. within the reach of the claim on the next of kin, yet is there one ἀγχιστεύς who is nearer than he, and who must first be asked.
The rendering of the Vulgate of the kinsman's reply is more easily understood:—“I yield up my right of near kinship: for neither ought I to blot out the continuance (posteritas) of my family: do thou use my privilege, which I declare that I freely renounce.”
Now Boaz was sixth in descent from this Perez whose mother Tamar, as quoted above, had been in much the same position as Ruth.
It is interesting to read further that the son born of this marriage of Ruth and Boaz is taken by the women of Bethlehem to Naomi, saying, “There is a son born to Naomi,” emphasising the duty of the heiress to bear a son, not into her husband's family, but to that of her father.
[pg 034]The story of Ruth is not, therefore, an exact example of the custom of levirate. But it illustrates incidentally the unity of the family. The sons of Elimelech died before the family division had taken place, and the house of Elimelech their father was thus in jeopardy of extinction. If Naomi had come within the proper operation of the levirate, the next of kin ought to have married her, but by her adoption of Ruth as her daughter, she gave Ruth the position of heiress or ἐπίκληρος, whilst the heir born to Ruth was called son, not of Ruth's former or present husband, but of Elimelech and (by courtesy) of Naomi, Elimelech's widow, through whom the issue ought otherwise to have been found.