Читать книгу On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society - Hugh E. Seebohm - Страница 4

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The duties of the individual to his οἶκος,

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.

began with his living parents;

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.”

and extended to their tomb.

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

Continuity of the family;

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.

in the Ordinances of Manu;

“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.

“By means of the eldest son, as soon as he is born, a man becomes possessed of a son and is thus cleared of his debt to the manes”

“A husband is born again on earth in his son.”

“If among many brothers born of one father, one should have a son, Manu said all those brothers would be possessed of sons by means of that son.”

i.e. one representative was sufficient as regards the duties to the manes in the house of the grandfather.

“Thro' a son one conquers worlds, thro' a son's son one attains endlessness, and through the son's son of a son one attains the world of the Sun.”

“The sort of reward one gets on crossing the water by means of bad boats is the sort of reward one gets on crossing the darkness (to the next world) by means of bad sons.”35

[pg 020]

and according to Plato.

Plato expresses the same feeling in the Laws:36

“After a sort the human race naturally partakes of immortality, of which all men have the greatest desire implanted in them; for the desire of every man that he may become famous, and not lie in the grave without a name, is only the love of continuance … In this way they are immortal leaving [children's] children behind them, with whom they are one in the unity of generation. And for a man voluntarily to deprive himself of this gift of immortality, as he deliberately does who will not have a wife and children, is impiety.”

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.