Читать книгу On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society - Hugh E. Seebohm - Страница 5

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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 importance of male succession.

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 a man fall fighting for his fatherland, it is no dishonourable thing: and his wife and his children left behind, and his οἶκος and κλῆρος are unharmed, if the Achaians go but back to their own country.”46

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

Succession through a daughter.

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:—

“One who is without a son should, by the following rule, make his daughter provide him a son:—‘The offspring which may be hers shall be for me the giver of offerings to the manes.’ ”

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.

She must marry the next of kin.

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

even though already married.

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.

“She who has not a brother … let not a wise man marry her, through fear of the law about a daughter's son.”60

Again Isaeus:—

“We, because of our nearness of kin, would have been compelled to maintain (γηροτροφεῖν) our aged grandfather and either ourselves marry Cleonymos' (our uncle's) daughters or give them away with their portions to others and all this our kinship, the laws, and our shame would have compelled us to perform or incur the greatest penalties and the utmost disgrace.”61

Similar rules in the laws of Gortyn,

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.

“The heiress shall marry the eldest brother of her father that is alive. If there are more heiresses and uncles, they shall ever marry the eldest. If there are no uncles but sons of uncles, she shall marry the son of her father's eldest brother. If there are more than one heiress and sons of uncles, they shall ever marry the son of the eldest in order: but a man shall not marry more than one heiress”62

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:—

“If the man will not marry her, though of age and wishing to marry, the guardians of the heiress shall sue, and the judge shall condemn him to marry her in two months. If he will not marry her, according to the law, she shall have all the property and shall marry the next of kin (after him) if there is one. …

“If she is of age and does not wish to marry the next of kin or if he is a minor and she does not wish to wait, she … can marry whom she will of those who claim her of the tribe. But she shall apportion off his share of the property to the first of kin.

“If there are no kin to her, she shall have all the property and marry whom she will of the tribe.

“If no one of the tribe will marry her, her guardians shall ask throughout the tribe, ‘ Will any marry her?’ And if any one then marries her, he shall do it in thirty days after the ‘asking.’ But if there is still no one, she shall marry any one else she can.”

Such pains were taken to find a representative [pg 027] for the deceased in his family, or at any rate in his tribe.64

and amongst the Israelites.

The same questions seem to have arisen amongst the Israelites in the time of Moses.

Numbers xxxvi. 8. “And every daughter that possesseth an inheritance (LXX. ἀγχιστεύουσα κληρονομίαν) in any tribe of the children of Israel, shall be wife unto one of the family of the tribe of her father (ἐνὶ τῶν ἐκ τοῦ δήμου τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτῆς), that the children of Israel may enjoy (ἀγχιστεύειν) every man the inheritance of his fathers.

“Even as the Lord commanded Moses, so did the daughters of Zelophehad.

“For Mahlah, Tirzah and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, were married unto their father's brother's sons (LXX. τοῖς ἀνεψιοῖς αὐτῶν).”