In the Homeric Hymn to Hestia, that deity receives the title of honour of firstborn: the poet, by a fanciful blending of ideas, implying that the honour paid to the sacred hearth by the eldest of the family, fell to her share as the eldest born of the children of Kronos.[215]
Aristotle says that every household is ruled (βασιλεύεται) by its oldest member,[216] and gives this prerogative of the household-basileus as the type and origin of the kingship in the village and the State. Reference has already been made, in the section on the limitations of the ἀγχιστεία, to the passage in the Gortyn law, viz.—
“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.”[217]
No joint holding between a father and his sons.
But it must be borne in mind that though the κλῆρος was set apart in theory for the use and sustenance of a head of a family with all his descendants, and was supposed to be inalienable therefrom, there is no reason to suppose that there existed among [pg 093] the Greeks a system of joint holding between father and son. The ownership and management of the property vested in the head of the family. It is true that brothers did not always divide their inheritance on the death of their father, but their undivided right to their respective equal shares remained to each one and his descendants as an individual property, and they always seem to have had the expectation of an ultimate subdivision amongst the separate οἶκοι that had sprung into being.[218]
Confirmatory evidence of the Gortyn Laws.
The Gortyn Laws throw some light on the subject.
As long as the father is alive, no man shall buy or receive in pledge from the son any of the father's property. But what the son himself has earned, or inherited, he may sell if he like.
So too the father may not dispose of the goods of the children which they have earned or inherited.
Yet may a son's prospective share in his paternal inheritance be sold to pay any legal fine he has incurred.[219]