The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: - £ vjum- - (" f BOOK SECOND. THE FAMILY. CHAPTER I. RelJgifiaWS.a.Jtlie- constituent Principle of the ancient Family. If we transport ourselves in thought to those ancient generations of men, we find in each house an altar, and around this altar the family assembled. The family meets every morning to address its first prayers to the sacred fire, and in the evening to invoke it for a lasttime. In the course of the day the members are once more assembled near the fire for the meal, of which they partake piously after prayer and libation. In all these religious acts, hymns, which their fathers have handed down, are sung in common by the family. Outside the Chouse, neiar at hand, in a neighboring fieldTtEere is a tomb — the second home of this family. Thereseveral, generations of ancestors repose together; deathjiasLnotseparated them. They remain grouped in this second existence, and continue to form an in dissoluble family.1 1 The use of family tombs by the ancients is incontestable; it disappeared only when the beliefs relative to the worship of the dead became obscured. The words raifot nurot, riiifos Tuj Between the living part and the dead part of the family there is only this distance of a few steps which separates the house from the tomb. On certain days, which are determined for each one by his domestics religion, the living assemble near their ancestors ; they offer them the funeral meal, pour out milk and wine to them, lay out cakes and fruits, or burn the flesh of a victim to them. In gxchangeJbr these offerings they ask protection; they call these ancestors their gods, ami ask them to render the fields fertile, the house prosperous, and their hearts virtuous. Generation alone was not the foundation of the ancient family. What proves this...