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 Sparta[41] 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.