§ 1. Degrees Of Blood-Relationship; The Ἀγχιστεία.
All kinsmen were not equally responsible.
Such being the character of the burden of mutual responsibility borne by members of kindred blood, it remains, if possible, to obtain some idea of how this responsibility became narrowed and limited to the nearest relations, and what was the meaning underlying the distinction drawn between certain degrees of relationship.
When examining the more detailed structure of the organisation of the kindred, considerable light seems to be thrown upon survivals in Athens by comparison with the customs of other communities, which were undergoing earlier stages of the same process of crystallisation from the condition of semi-nomadic tribes into that of settled provinces or kingdoms.
The unity of the οἶκος.
In the Gortyn Laws we read:—
iv. 24. “The father shall have power over the children and the property to divide it amongst them.... As long as they (the parents) are alive, there is no necessity for division.... If a man or woman die their children, or grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, shall have the property....”
The headship of the οἶκος and the ownership of the property vested in the parent as long as he lived and wished to maintain his power. Even after his death, unless they wished it, the sons need not divide up amongst themselves, but could live on with joint ownership in the one οἶκος of their deceased father. The eldest son would probably take the house itself, i.e. the hearth, with the duties to the family altars which devolved upon him as head of the family.[128]
An example of this joint ownership occurs in the speech of Demosthenes against Leochares.[129] The two sons of Euthumachos after his death gave their sister in marriage (no doubt with her proper portion), and lived separately but without dividing their inheritance (τὴν οὐσίαν ἀνέμητον). Even after the marriage of one brother, they still left the property undivided, each living on his share of the income, one in Athens, the other in Salamis.
The possibility of thus living in one οἶκος and on an undivided patrimony is implied in another passage in Demosthenes, where, however, the exact opposite is described as actually having taken place.[130]
Bouselos had five sons. He divided (διένειμεν τὴν οὐσίαν) his substance amongst them all as was fair and right, and they married wives and begat children and [pg 048] children's children. Thus five οἶκοι sprang up out of the one of Bouselos, and each brother dwelt apart, having his own οἶκος and bringing up his own offspring (ἔκγονοι) himself (χωρὶς ἕκαστος ᾤκει).
Whilst the parents were alive the family naturally held very closely together, and often probably lived in one patriarchal household like Priam's at Troy.
Isaeus declares:—The law commands that we maintain (τρέφειν) our parents (γονεῖς): these are—parents, grandparents and their parents, if they are still alive:
“For they are the beginning (ἀρχή) of the family (γένος) and their estate descends to their offspring (ἔκγονοι): wherefore it is necessary to maintain them even if they leave nothing.”[131]
The duty of maintenance (τρέφειν) owed to the ancestor would follow the same relationship as the right of inheritance from him, and this common debt towards their living forebears could not help further consolidating the group of descendants already bound together by common rites at the tombs of the dead.
But granted this community of rights and debts, is it possible to formulate for the Greeks anything of the same limitations in the incidence of responsibility amongst blood-relations that is to be found elsewhere?
Grades of kinship in Western Europe.
In western Europe, owing perhaps to the influence of Christianity, the rites of ancestor-worship have no prominence. Ecclesiastical influence however was unable to prevent an exceedingly complex subdivision of the kindred existing in Wales and elsewhere. Whether this subdivision finds its raison d'être in the worship of ancestors or not, the groups [pg 049] thus formed serve as units for sustaining the responsibilities incident to tribal life, and being, as will be seen, governed by similar considerations to those existing among the Greeks, they afford very suitable material for comparison, and throw considerable light upon one another.
The position of the great-grandson,
As the various departments affected by blood-relationship or purity of descent come under notice, it will be seen that the position of great-grandson as at once limiting the immediate family of his parents and heading a new family of descendants is marked with peculiar emphasis.
in Wales,
In the ancient laws of Wales it rests with great-grandsons to make the final division of their inheritance and start new households.
Second cousins may demand redivision of the heritage descending (and perhaps already divided up in each generation between) from their great-grandfather. After second cousins no redivision or co-equation can be claimed.[132]
In the meanwhile the oldest living parents maintained their influence in family matters. In the story of Kilhwch and Olwen, in the Mabinogion, the father of Olwen, before betrothing her to Kilhwch, declares that “her four great-grandmothers and her four great-grandsires are yet alive; it is needful that I take counsel of them.”[133]
and in feudal Normandy.
Even when feudalism refused to acknowledge other than an individual responsibility for a fief, it was unable to overcome the tribal theory of the [pg 050] indivisibility of the family, which maintained its unity in some places even under a feudal exterior. But as generations proceeded, and the relationships within the family diverged beyond the degree of second cousin, a natural breaking up seems to have taken place, though in the direction of subinfeudation under the feudal enforcement of the rule of primogeniture, instead of the practice, more in accordance with tribal instincts, of equal division and enfranchisement. It may however be surmised that the subdivision and subinfeudation of a holding in the occupation of such a group of kinsmen would be carried out by the formation of further similar groups.
The custom of parage.
In the Coustumes du Pais de Normandie mention is made of such a method of land-holding, called parage. It consists of an undivided tenure of brothers and relations within the degree of second cousins.
The eldest does homage to the capital lord for all the paragers. The younger and their descendants hold of the eldest without homage, until the relationship comes to the sixth degree inclusive (i.e. second cousins). When the lineage is beyond the sixth degree, the heirs of the cadets have to do homage to the heirs of the eldest or to whomsoever has acquired the fief. Then parage ceases.[134]
The tenure then becomes one of subinfeudation. As long as the parage continued, the share of a deceased parager would be dealt with by redivision of rights, and no question would arise of finding heirs. But when it became a question of [pg 051] finding an heir to the group, failing heirs in the seventh degree inclusive, that is, son of second cousins—looked upon as son to the group—failing such an heir, the estate escheated to the lord.
Co-heritage in Wales.
There is an interesting passage in the Ancient Laws of Wales ordaining that the next-of-kin shall not inherit as heir to his deceased kinsman, but as heir to the ancestor, who, apart from himself, would be without direct heir, i.e. presumably their common ancestor.
“No person is to obtain the land of a co-heir, as of a brother, or of a cousin, or of a second cousin, by claiming it as heir to that one co-heir who shall have died without leaving an heir of his body: but by claiming it as heir to one of his own parents, who had been owner of that land until his death without heir, whether a father, or grandfather, or great-grandfather: that land he is to have, if he be the nearest of kin to the deceased.”[135]
This of course refers to inheritance within the group of co-heirs, the members of which held their position by virtue of their common relationship within certain degrees to the founder. And we may infer that emphasis was thus laid on the proof of relationship by direct descent, in order to prevent shares in the inheritance passing from hand to hand unnoticed, beyond the strict limit where subdivision could be claimed per capita by the individual representatives of the diverging stirpes.
Degrees of relationship in India.
The kindred in the Ordinances of Manu is divided into two groups:—
1. Sapindas, who owe the funeral cake at the tomb.
2. Samānodakas, who pour the water libation at the tomb.
“To three ancestors the water libation must be made; for three ancestors the funeral cake is prepared; the fourth (descendant or generation) is the giver (of the water and the cake); the fifth has properly nothing to do (with either gift).”[136]
This may be put in tabular form:—
Receivers of water.
1. Great-grandfather's great-grandfather.
2. Great-grandfather's grandfather.
3. Great-grandfather's father.
Receivers of cake.
1. Great-grandfather.
2. Grandfather.
3. Father.
4. Giver of cake and water
5. Excluded
Or inversely:—
Givers of cake or Sapindas.
Householder
Brothers
1st cousins
2nd cousins
Pourers of water or Samānodakas.
3rd cousins
4th cousins
5th cousins
Within the Sapinda-ship of his mother, a “twice-born” man may not marry.[137] Outside the Sapinda-ship, a wife or widow, “commissioned” to bear children to the name of her husband, must not go.
“Now Sapinda-ship ceases with the seventh person, but the relationship of a Samānodaka (ends) with the ignorance of birth and name.”[138]
All are Sapindas who offer the cake to the same ancestors.
Four generations share in the cake-offering.
The head of the family would himself offer or share with all his descendants in the offering of the one cake to his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his father. And if this passage is taken in conjunction with the one quoted just above, the number sharing in the cake-offering, limited as in the text at the seventh person from the first ancestor who receives the cake, is just sufficient to include the great-grandson of the head of the family, supposed to be making the offering.
The group, thus sharing the same cake-offering, would in the natural course be moving continually downwards, generation by generation as the head of the family died, thereby causing the great-grandfather to pass from the receivers of the cake-offering to the receivers of the water libation, and admitting the great-grandson's son into the number of Sapindas who shared the cake-offering. And at no time would more than four generations have a share in the same cake offered to the three nearest ancestors of the head of the family.
Similar grouping of the pourers of the water libation.
The Samānodakas, or pourers of the water libation appear to have been similarly grouped.
“Ignorance of birth and name” was in Wales considered to be equivalent to beyond fifth cousins. According to the Gwentian Code, “there is no proper name in kin further than that”—i.e. fifth cousins.[139] And this tallies exactly with the previous quotation from Manu limiting the water libation to [pg 054] three generations of ancestors beyond those to whom the cake is due, which, as has been seen, includes fifth cousins.
And it must be borne in mind that fifth cousins are great-grandsons of the great-grandsons of their common ancestor, or two generations of groups of second cousins.
The οἶκος includes four generations.
It was extremely improbable that a man would see further than his great-grandchildren born to him before his death. And it might also occasionally occur in times of war or invasion that a man's sons and grandsons might go out to serve as soldiers, leaving the old man and his young great-grandchildren at home.
If the fighting members of the family were killed, the great-grandsons (who would be second cousins or nearer to each other) would have to inherit directly from their great-grandfather: and thus, especially in cases where the property was held undivided after the father's death, we can easily see that second cousins (i.e. all who traced back to the common great-grandfather) might be looked upon as forming a natural limit to the immediate descendants in any one οἶκος, and as the furthest removed who could claim shares of the ancestral inheritance.
After the death of the great-grandfather or head of the house, his descendants would probably wish to divide up the estate and start new houses of their own. The eldest son was generally named after his father's father,[140] and would carry on the name of the [pg 055] eldest branch of his great-grandfather's house, and would be responsible for the proper maintenance of the rites on that ancestor's tomb. He would also be guardian of any brotherless woman or minor amongst his cousins, each of whom would be equally responsible to him and to each other for all the duties and privileges entailed upon blood-relationship.
Thus seems naturally to spring up an inner group of blood-relations closely drawn together by ties which only indirectly reached other and outside members of the γένος.
The ἀγχιστεία at Athens.
In the fourth century B.C. this compact group limited to second cousins still survived at Athens, responsible to each other for succession, by inheritance or by marriage of a daughter; for vengeance and purification after injury received by any member, and for all duties shared by kindred blood.
This close relation was called ἀγχιστεία, and all its members were called ἀγχιστεῖς i.e. any one upon whom the claim upon the next-of-kin might at any time fall.
The speech of Demosthenes against Makartatos affords considerable information as to the constitution of the family-group or οἶκος. The five sons of Bouselos,[141] we are told, on his death divided his substance amongst them, and each started a new οἶκος and begat children and children's children.[142] The action, which was the occasion of the speech, lay between the great-grandsons of two of these five founders of οἶκοι, Stratios and Hagnias, and had reference to the disposal of the estate of the grandson [pg 056] of the latter, which had come into the hands of the great-grandson of Stratios.
One might have supposed that the descendants of Bouselos, with their common burial ground[143] and so forth, would have ranked as all in the same οἶκος under their title of Bouselidai. But it is clear from this speech of Demosthenes, that too many generations had already passed to admit of Bouselos being considered as still head of an unbroken οἶκος, and that his great-great-grandsons were subdivided into separate οἶκοι under the names of their respective great-grandfathers, Stratios, Hagnias, &c. (οἵ εἰσιν ἐκ τοῦ Στρατίου οἴκου, ἐκ δὲ τοῦ Ἁγνίου οὐδεπώποτ᾽ ἐγένοντο).[144]