[231] Aeschylus, Eumenides, 545 sqq.
[232] See Iliad, xxi. 412 sq.; Sophocles, Œdipus Coloneus, 1299, 1434; von Lasaulx, Der Fluch bei Griechen und Römern, p. 8; Müller, Dissertations on the Eumenides, p. 155 sqq.; Rohde, ‘Paralipomena,’ in Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 1895, p. 7.
[233] Plato, Leges, iv. 717.
[234] Hesiod, Opera et dies, 331 sqq. (329 sqq.).
[235] Servius Tullius, in Bruns, Fontes Juris Romani antiqui, p. 14, and Festus, De verborum significatione, ver. Plorare: “Si parentem puer verberit, ast olle plorassit, puer divis parentum sacer esto.” Cf. Leist, Alt-arisches Jus Civile, i. 184.
[236] I am indebted to Prince Kropotkin for this statement.
[237] Kovalewsky, Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia, p. 37.
[238] Krauss, op. cit. p. 119.
[239] Maine, Early Law and Custom, p. 243.
In various instances the rewards or punishments attached to the behaviour of children seem to spring from the belief in parental blessings and curses, although the cause is not expressly mentioned. According to ancient Hindu ideas, a father, mother, and spiritual teacher are equal to the three Vedas, equal to the three gods, Brahman, Vishnu, and Siva.[240] A man who shows no regard for them derives no benefit from any religious observance; whereas, “by honouring his mother, he gains the present world; by honouring his father, the world of gods; and by paying strict obedience to his spiritual teacher, the world of Brahman.”[241] As in Greece a person who had assaulted his parent was regarded as polluted by a curse,[242] so according to the sacred law of India, those who quarrel with their father, and those who have forsaken their father, mother, or spiritual teacher, defile a company and must not be entertained at a Srâddha offering.[243] Those who have struck any of these persons cannot be readmitted until they have been purified with water taken from a sacred lake or river.[244] The stain of disobedience towards mother and father is purged away with barley-corns, like food which has been licked at by dogs or pigs, or defiled by crows and impure men.[245] In the Dhammapada it is said that to him who always greets and constantly reveres the aged four things will increase, namely, life, beauty, happiness, and power.[246] The Coreans believe that “the richest rewards on earth and brightest heaven hereafter await the filial child,” whereas “curses and disgrace in this life and the hottest hell in the world hereafter are the penalties of the disobedient or neglectful child.”[247] It seems to have been a notion of the ancient Egyptians that a son who accepted the word of his father would attain old age on that account.[248] The following is an exhortation which an Aztec gave to his son:—“Guard against imitating the example of those wicked sons who, like brutes that are deprived of reason, neither reverence their parents, listen to their instruction, nor submit to their correction; because whoever follows their steps will have an unhappy end, will die in a desperate or sudden manner, or will be killed and devoured by wild beasts.”[249] And if an Aztec married without the sanction of his parents, the belief was that he would be punished with some misfortune.[250] The Aleuts were of opinion that those who were attentive to feeble old men, expecting in exchange their good advice only, would be long-lived and fortunate in the chase and in war, and would not be neglected when growing old themselves.[251] In the Tonga Islands “disrespect to one’s superior relations is little short of sacrilege to the gods,” and to pay respect to chiefs is “a superior sacred duty, the non-fulfilment of which it is supposed the gods would punish almost as severely as disrespect to themselves.”[252] In the same islands great efficacy is ascribed to curses which are uttered by a superior.[253]