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]
“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.”