ON THE STRUCTURE
OF
GREEK TRIBAL SOCIETY
AN ESSAY
by
Hugh E. Seebohm
London
MacMillan And Co.
And New York
1895.
CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter I. Introductory.
Chapter II. The Meaning Of The Bond Of Kinship.
§ 1. The Duty Of Maintenance Of Parents During Life, And After Death At
Their Tomb.
§ 2. The Duty Of Providing Male Succession.
§ 3. The Position Of The Widow Without Child And The Duties Of An Only
Daughter.
§ 4. Succession Through A Married Daughter: Growth Of Adoption:
Introduction Of New Member To Kinsmen.
§ 5. The Liability For Bloodshed.
Chapter III. The Extent Of The Bond Of Kinship.
§ 1. Degrees Of Blood-Relationship; The Ἀγχιστεία.
§ 2. Limitations In Respect Of Succession Outside The Direct Line Of
Descent.
§ 3. Division Amongst Heirs.
§ 4. Qualifications For The Recognition Of Tribal Blood.
§ 5. Limitations Of Liability For Bloodshed.
Chapter IV. The Relation Of The Family To The Land.
§ 1. The Κλῆρος And Its Form.
§ 2. The Relation Of The Κλῆρος To The Οἶκος.
§ 3. The Householder In India: The Guest.
§ 4. Tenure Of Land In Homer: The Κλῆρος And The Τέμενος.
§ 5. Early Evidence _continued_: The Κλῆρος And The Maintenance Of The
οἶκος.
§ 6. Early Evidence _continued_: The Τέμενος And The Maintenance Of The
Chieftain.
§ 7. Summary Of The Early Evidence.
§ 8. Hesiod And His Κλήρος.
§ 9. Survivals Of Family Land In Later Times.
§ 10. The Idea Of Family Land Applied Also To Leasehold And
Semi-Servile Tenure.
Chapter V. Conclusion.
Index.
Footnotes
PREFACE
These notes, brief as they are, owe more than can be told to my father’s
researches into the structure and methods of the Tribal System. They owe
their existence to his inspiration and encouragement. A suitable place for
them might possibly be found in an Appendix to his recently published
volume on the Structure of the Tribal System in Wales.
In ascribing to the structure of Athenian Society a direct parentage
amongst tribal institutions, I am dealing with a subject which I feel to
be open to considerable criticism. And I am anxious that the matters
considered in this essay should be judged on their own merits, even
though, in pursuing the method adopted herein, I may have quite
inadequately laid the case before the reader.
My thanks are due, for their ready help, to Professor W. Ridgeway, Mr.
James W. Headlam, and Mr. Henry Lee Warner, by means of whose kind
suggestions the following pages have been weeded of several of their
faults.
It is impossible to say how much I have consciously or unconsciously
absorbed from the works of the late M. Fustel de Coulanges. His _La Cité
Antique_ and his _Nouvelles Recherches sur quelques Problèmes d’Histoire_
(1891) are stores of suggestive material for the student of Greek and
Roman customs. They are rendered all the more instructive by the charm of
his style and method. I have merely dipped a bucket into his well.
In quoting from Homer, I have made free use of the translations of Messrs.
Lang, Leaf, and Myers of the _Iliad_, and of Messrs. Butcher and Lang of
the _Odyssey_; and I wish to make full acknowledgment here of the debt
that I owe to them.
Some explanation seems to be needful of the method pursued in this essay
with regard to the comparison of Greek customs with those of other
countries. The selection for comparison has been entirely arbitrary.
Wales has been chosen to bear the brunt of illustration, partly, as I have
said, because of my father’s work on the Welsh Tribal System, partly
because the _Ancient Laws of Wales_ afford a peculiarly vivid glimpse into
the inner organisation of a tribal people, such as cannot be obtained
elsewhere.
The _Ordinances of Manu_, on the other hand, are constantly quoted by
writers on Greek institutions; and, I suppose, in spite of the uncertainty
of their date, they can be taken as affording a very fair account of the
customs of a highly developed Eastern people. It would be hard, moreover,
to say where the connection of the Greeks with the East began or ended.
The use made of the _Old Testament_ in these notes hardly needs further
remark. Of no people, in their true tribal condition before their
settlement, have we a more graphic account than of the Israelites. Their
proximity geographically to the Phœnicians, and the accounts of the
widespread fame of Solomon and the range of his commerce, at once suggest
comparison with the parallel and contemporaneous period of Achaian
history, immediately preceding the Dorian invasion, when, if we may trust
the accounts of Homer, the intercourse between the shores of the
Mediterranean must have been considerable.
All reference to records of Roman customs has been omitted, not because
they are not related or analogous to the Greek, but because they could not
reasonably be brought within the scope of this essay. The ancestor-worship
among the Romans was so complete, and the organisation of their kindreds
so highly developed, that they deserve treatment on their own basis, and
are sufficient to form the subject of a separate volume.
H. E. S.
THE HERMITAGE, HITCHIN.
_July, 1895._
[Transcriber’s Note: This e-book contains much Greek text which is often
relevant to the point of the book. In the ASCII versions of the e-book,
the Greek is transliterated into Roman letters, which do not perfectly
represent the Greek original; especially, accent and breathing marks do
not transliterate. The HTML and PDF versions contain the true Greek text
of the original book. In the ASCII e-book, the markings such as (M1)
indicate marginal notes, which were printed in the margins of the original
book, but in the e-book are transcribed at the end with the footnotes.]
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.
(M1) In trying to ascertain the course of social development among the
Greeks, the inquirer is met by an initial difficulty. The Greeks were not
one great people like the Israelites, migrating into and settling in a new
country, flowing with milk and honey. Their movements were erratic and
various, and took place at very different times. Several partial
migrations are described in Homer, and others are referred to as having
taken place only a few generations back. The continuation of unsettled
life must have had the effect of giving cohesion to the individual
sections into which the Greeks were divided, in proportion as the process
of settlement was protracted and difficult.
But in spite of divergencies caused by natural surroundings, by the
hostility or subservience of previous occupants of the soil, there are
some features of the tribal system, wherever it is examined, so inherent
in its structure as to seem almost indelible. A new civilisation was not
formed to fit into the angles of city walls. Even modification could take
place only of those customs whose roots did not strike too deeply into the
essence of the composition of tribal society.
(M2) It is the object of these notes to try to put back in their true
setting some of the conditions prevailing, sometimes incongruously with
city life, among the Greeks in historical times, and by comparison with
analogous survivals in known tribal communities, of whose condition we
have fuller records, to establish their real historical continuity from an
earlier stage of habit and belief.
(M3) There were three important public places necessary to every Greek
community and symbolical to the Greek mind of the very foundations of
their institutions. These were:—the _Agora_ or place of assembly, the
place of justice, and the place of religious sacrifice. From these three
sacred precincts the man who stirred up civil strife, who was at war with
his own people, cut himself off. Such an one is described in Homer as
being, by his very act, “clanless” (ἀφρήτωρ), “out-law” (ἀθέμιστος), and
“hearthless” (ἀνέστιος).(1) In the camp of the Greeks before Troy the
ships and huts of his followers were congregated by the hut of their chief
or leader. Each sacrificed or poured libation to his favourite or familiar
god at his own hut door.(2) But in front of Odysseus’ ships, which, we are
told, were drawn up at the very centre of the camp, stood the great altar
of Zeus Panomphaios—lord of _all_ oracles—“exceeding fair.”(3) “Here,”
says the poet, “were _Agora_, _Themis_, and the altars of the gods.”
The Trojans held _agora_ at Priam’s doors,(4) and it is noticeable that
the space in front of the chief’s hut or palace was generally considered
available for such purposes as assembly, games, and so forth, just as it
was with the ancient Irish.
(M4) In the centre of most towns of Greece(5) stood the Prytaneum or
magistrates’ hall, and in the Prytaneum was the sacred hearth to which
attached such reverence that in the most solemn oaths the name of Hestia
was invoked even before that of Zeus.(6) Thucydides states that each κώμη
or village of Attica had its hearth or Prytaneum of its own, but looked up
to the Hestia and Prytaneum in the city of Athens as the great centre of
their larger polity. In just the same way the lesser kindreds of a tribe
would have their sacred hearths and rites, but would look to the hearth
and person of their chief as symbolical of their tribal unity. Thucydides
also mentions how great a wrench it seemed to the Athenians to be
compelled to leave their “sacred” homes, to take refuge within the walls
of Athens from the impending invasion by the Spartans.(7)
The word _Prytanis_ means “chieftain.” It is probable that, as the duties
sacred and magisterial of the chief became disseminated among the other
officers of later civilisation, the chief’s dwelling, called the
Prytaneum, acquiring vitality from the indelible superstition attaching to
the hearth within its precincts, maintained thereby its political
importance, when nothing but certain religious functions remained to its
lord and master in the office of Archon Basileus.
(M5) Mr. Frazer, in his article in the _Journal of Philology_(8) upon the
resemblance of the Prytaneum in Greece to the Temple of Vesta in Rome,
shows that both had a direct connection with, if not an absolute origin in
the domestic hearth of the chieftain. The Lares and Penates worshipped in
the Temple of Vesta, he says, were originally the Lares and Penates of the
king, and were worshipped at his hearth, the only difference between the
hearth in the temple and the hearth in the king’s house being the absence
of the royal householder.(9)
Mr. Frazer also maintains that the reverence for the hearth and the
concentration of such reverence on the hearth of the chieftain was the
result of the difficulty of kindling a fire from rubbing sticks together,
and of the responsibility thus devolving upon the chieftain unfailingly to
provide fire for his people. Whether this was the origin or not, before
the times that come within the scope of this inquiry, the hearth had
acquired a real sanctity which had become involved in the larger idea of
it as the centre of a kindred, including on occasion the mysterious
presence also of long dead ancestors.
(M6) The basis of tribal coherence was community of blood, actual or
supposed; the visible evidence of the possession of tribal blood was the
undisputed participation, as _one of a kindred_, in the common religious
ceremonies, from which the blood-polluted and the stranger-in-blood were
so strictly shut out.(10) It is therefore in the incidence of religious
duties, and in the qualifications of the participants, that it is
reasonable to seek survivals of true tribal sentiment.
Although the religious life of the Greeks was always complex, there is not
to be found in Homer the broad distinction drawn afterwards between public
and private gods. It is noticeable that the later Greeks sought to draw
into their homes the beneficent influence of one or other of the greater
gods, whose protection and guidance were claimed in times of need by all
members of the household. Secondary influences, though none the less
strongly felt, were those of the past heroes of the house, sometimes only
just dead, to be propitiated at the family tombs or hearth. Anxiety on
this head, and the deeply-rooted belief in the real need to the dead of
attentions from the living, were, it will be seen, most powerful factors
in the development of Greek society.
(M7) The worship of ancestors or household gods as such is not evident in
the visible religious exercises of the Homeric poems. But this can hardly
be a matter of surprise. The Greek chieftains mentioned in the poems are
so nearly descended from the gods themselves, are in such immediate
relation each with his guardian deity, and are so indefatigable in their
attentions thereto, that it would surely be extremely irrelevant if any of
the libations or hecatombs were perverted to any intermediate, however
heroic, ancestor from the all-powerful and ever ready divinity who was so
often also himself the boasted founder of the family.(11)
(M8) The libations and hecatombs themselves, however, seem to serve much
the same purpose as the offerings to the _manes_ or household gods, and
relieved the luxurious craving for sustenance in the immortals, left
unsatisfied by their ethereal diet of nectar and ambrosia.(12)
(M9) Yet it is strange that if libations and sacrifices were paid to the
dead _periodically_ at their tombs, no mention of the occurrence is to be
found in Homer. That the dead were believed to appreciate such attentions
may be gathered from the directions given by Circe to Odysseus.
“Then pour a drink-offering to all the dead, first with mead
(μελικρήτῳ), and thereafter with sweet wine, and for the third
time with water, and sprinkle white meal thereon.... and promise
thou wilt offer _in thy halls_(13) a barren heifer, the best thou
hast, and fill the pyre with treasure, and wilt sacrifice apart to
Teiresias alone a black sheep without spot, the fairest of your
flock.”
(M10) This done, the ghosts flock up to drink of the blood of the victim.
But the ghost of Elpenor, who met his death at the house of Circe by
falling from the roof in his drunken haste to join his already departed
comrades, and who had therefore received no burial at their hands, demands
no libations or sacrifices for the refreshment of his thirsty soul, but
merely burial with tears and a barrow upon the shore of the gray sea, that
his name may be remembered by men to come.
Nestor’s son elsewhere is made to remark that one must not grudge the dead
their meed of tears; for the times are so out of joint, “this is now the
only due we pay to miserable men, to cut the hair and let the tear fall
from the cheek.”(14)
Is the right conclusion then that the Homeric Greeks did not sacrifice at
the tombs of their fathers, and that the so-called ancestor-worship
prevalent later was introduced or revived under their successors? Or is it
that the aristocratic tone of the poet did not permit him to bear witness
to the intercourse with any deity besides the one great family of Olympic
gods, less venerable than a river or other personification of nature?(15)
There exists such close family relationship amongst Homer’s gods, extended
as it is also to most of his chieftains, that taking into account the
conspicuous reverence displayed towards the hearth and the respect for
seniority in age, it may perhaps be justifiable to suppose that domestic
religious observances, other than those directed to the Olympic gods, were
thought by the poet to be as much beneath his notice as the swarms of
common tribesmen who shrink and shudder in the background of the poems.
(M11) Ancestor-worship would be as much out of place in the Old Testament;
and yet there are references in the Bible to offerings to the dead which,
unless they are held to refer only to importations from outside religions
and not to relapses in the Israelites themselves to former superstitions
of their own people, imply that the great tribal religion of the
Israelites had superseded pre-existing ceremonies of ancestor-worship.
Deut. xxvi. 13. “And thou shalt say before the Lord thy God, I
have brought away the hallowed things out of mine house, and also
have given them unto the Levite and the stranger, to the
fatherless and to the widow, according to all thy commandments
which thou hast commanded me: I have not transgressed thy
commandments, neither have I forgotten them: I have not eaten
thereof in my mourning, neither have I taken away ought thereof
for any unclean use, nor _given ought thereof for the dead_.”
The transgressions of the Israelites in the wilderness are described in
the Psalms:—“They joined themselves also unto Baalpeor and _ate the
sacrifices of the dead_.”(16)
It was not necessary for an ancestor to become a god to be worthy of
worship, or to need the attentions of the living. If he was thought to
haunt tomb or hearth, and to keep his connection thus with his family in
the upper world, he required nourishment on his visits. He was also
considered to keep a jealous watch on the continuance of his fair fame
among the living.
(M12) A close resemblance in this point lies between the Homeric poems and
the Old Testament. Though actual food and drink is not provided for the
dead, yet the stress laid on the permanence of the family, _lest the name
of the dead be cut off from his place_, is quite in keeping with the
request of Elpenor to Odysseus to insure the continuance of his name in
the memory of living men.
It is quite possible that, as the story of the interview of Odysseus with
the dead reveals that the idea of the dead enjoying sacrifices of food and
drink was familiar at that time, even though the periodical supply of such
is not mentioned, so the existence of Laban’s household gods and the
gathering of the kindred of Jesse to their family ceremony(17) may bear
witness to the presence of a survival of ancestor-worship in some
equivalent form, underlying the all-absorbing religion of the Israelites.
At this day the spirits of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are considered by the
Mohammedans of Hebron actually to inhabit the cave of Machpelah, and, in
the case of Isaac at any rate, to be extremely angered by any negligence
shown to their altars, either by omission of the customary ceremonies or
by admission within the sacred precinct of any stranger of alien faith.
It must not therefore be inferred altogether that the regular
ancestor-worship so-called was of later origin amongst the Greeks, but
rather that the constitution of society did not afford it the same
prominence to the mind of Homer and perhaps his contemporaries, as it
acquired later.
(M13) M. Fustel de Coulanges, in _La Cité Antique_, has so well
established the prevalence of ancestor-worship among the Greeks, drawing
illustration both from Indian and Roman sources, that no further instances
of its existence are needed here.
The ceremonies however and offerings at the tombs of their fathers did not
supersede, amongst the Athenians at any rate, their worship of the Olympic
gods. The Olympic gods themselves moreover were clearly connected with
their family life. The protection of Zeus was specially claimed under the
title of γενέθλιος or even σύναιμος(18) and as ἑρκεῖος he received worship
upon the altar that stood in the court-yard of nearly every house in
Attica.(19) The permanent place of these gods in the homes of the people
is further denoted by the use of such epithets as ἐγγενεῖς(20) and
πατρῷοι.(21)
(M14) The tombs, on the other hand, were not approached with the purpose
of invoking powerful aid, but rather with the intent of soothing a
troubled spirit with care and attention, and of providing it with such
nourishing refreshment as could not be procured in the regions of the
starving dead.
“I come, bringing to my son’s sire propitiating libations, such as
are soothing to the dead, from hallowed cow white milk, sweet to
drink; the flower distiller’s dew—clear honey; the virgin spring’s
refreshing draught; and undefiled from its wild mother, the liquid
gladness of the time-honoured vine; also from the ever-leafy
growth of the pale green olive fragrant fruit is here, and twined
flowers, children of the teeming earth.”(22)
(M15) The same idea of nourishment of the dead, though shared with the
other gods, determines the offerings in the Egyptian _Book of the
Dead_.(23)
“I live upon loaves, white wheat, beer, red wheat.... Place me
with vases of milk and wine, with cakes and loaves, and plenty of
meat in the dwelling of Anubis.”(24)
“Grant to me the funereal food, the drinks, the oxen, the geese,
the fabrics, the incense, the oil, and all the good and pure
things upon which the gods live.”(25)
There is one passage that almost implies that the dead retained in idea a
claim upon the produce of the land which nourished them whilst alive, or
that they had a special allotment even in the other world:—
“I sit down among the very great gods of Nut. A field extends for
me; the products of the ground are for me. I eat them; I am
favoured with them; I live in plenty by them.... I am given corn
and wheat for my mouth.”(26)
Chapter cxliv. of the _Book of the Dead_ is to be said,
“at the gate of every room while offering to each of them thighs
and heads of red cows, the value of seven vases; while offering
blood extracted from the heart, the value of a hundred vases;
sixteen loaves of white bread, eight round cakes, eight oval
cakes, eight broad thin cakes, eight measures of beer, and eight
of wheat, a perfumed oil-basin full of milk from a white cow,
green grass, green figs, mestem and beads of incense to be burnt.”
Chapter cxlviii. ordains that there
“shall be placed offerings before them of loaves, beer, meat,
incense, funereal dishes, bringing into favour with Râ and making
that the _deceased is fed in the netherworld_.”
(M16) In the next chapters frequent reference will be made to the
offerings to ancestors, or _manes_, among the ancient Hindoos. With them
the cake-offering to the dead became a most important symbol, uniting in a
common duty all descendants from certain ancestors within fixed degrees,
and marking them off in the matter of responsibility thereto from more
distant relations, who owed similar duty elsewhere.
(M17) Being thus surrounded by nations that believed intensely in the need
in the dead of nourishment at the hands of their relatives on earth, it
would indeed be surprising if the Greeks were found not to share in the
belief. But the fact remains that in the earliest Greek literature it is
least conspicuous, and the gulf seems widest between the living and the
dead. Can this be laid to the charge of the artificial superstitions of a
philosophical class of poets? Or is it due to the true evolution of such
beliefs, that as long as our search touches upon the unsettled periods of
semi-migratory life, the tombs of individual members of a family being
scattered here or there wherever they meet their deaths, the offering to
the dead takes a special form, inasmuch as the solidarity of the tribe
eclipses the importance of the family as a unit, and the religious
ceremonies of the chieftain absorb the attention of the lesser members of
the tribe?
M. de Coulanges points out that the meaning of the Latin word _Lar_ is
lord, prince or master, and that _Hestia_ was sometimes designated by the
Greeks with the similar title of mistress of the house, or princess.(27)
If, as long as the tribe was felt to be a real unit, the religious
instincts of the tribesmen were concentrated upon the worship of their
tribal deities—the great ancestors of the tribe, and more emphatically and
directly the ancestors of their chieftain—it would be quite natural, in
the weakening of the central worship, for the titles of honour and respect
to be used equally towards those meaner ancestors who henceforth occupied
the religious energies of the head of each family or household. In
fulfilment of a similar sentiment, the later Greeks commonly used the word
ἥρως in speaking of a dead friend, deeming that any one who departed this
life passed to the ranks of those princes of the community from whom all
were proud to trace descent.
(M18) M. de Coulanges considers that the sacred rites of the family at the
hearth formed a more real tie than the belief in a common blood; and that
upon this religious basis was built up the greater hearth of the Prytaneum
as the centre of city life, to bind together the several families
composing the community. But without pretending to come to a final
decision on this the main tendency of social development, surely something
may yet be said in favour of the contrary theory; that the reverence that
centred in the hearth was in effect the expression of the sanctity of the
tie of blood, as felt by all members of the house, and that this feeling
drew its real importance for the community, not from the founding of the
city by the amalgamation of several families, but as a survival from an
earlier stage of life, when society circled round what was then in more
than name the Prytaneum of the tribal chieftain.
Facts are wanting to justify a conclusion as to which of these theories
bears the closest resemblance to the truth, but it is easy to imagine what
might be the line of development if the latter hypothesis be maintained.
(M19) During the wanderings and migrations of peoples in the search for
greener pastures or broader lands, each community or tribe would be
constantly under arms and subject to attack from the enemies they were
passing through or subjugating. This constant sojourning in a strange
land, surrounded by foes, would be a source of much solidarity to the
tribe itself, drawing its members closely together for mutual defence and
subsistence.
But when once the tribe had found a country to its taste, and had made a
settlement with borders comparatively permanently established, emphasis
would be transferred to the petty quarrels and internal dissensions
arising between different sections within the community itself. The tie of
common blood, uniting all members of the tribe, would be gradually
disregarded and displaced by the less homely and more political relation
of fellow-citizenship, which, though retaining many of the characteristics
of the tribal bond, would necessarily be felt in a very different manner.
In this disintegration of the larger unit, the existence of kinship by
blood would be acknowledged only where the relationship was obvious and
well known. And it would no longer be sufficient merely to prove
membership of a kindred; as those outside certain limits would claim
exemption from the responsibilities entailed by closer relationship.
(M20) So, too, in the matter of religious observance: the reverence of the
individual for the Prytaneum and common hearth of the state would undergo
a change into a less personal sentiment; the rites connected therewith
would be delegated to an official priest; and it is with the head of each
family, surrounded by those who are really conscious of their connection
by blood in common descent from much more immediate ancestors, that the
true tribal feeling would longest survive, though, of course, on much
narrower lines.
The privileges of citizenship were, it will be seen, as carefully guarded
as those of the tribe, but in a more perfunctory and arbitrary manner;
whilst the intimate connection of the members of the family with the
hearth and the graves of their ancestors stands out in strong relief.
By the time of Hesiod, besides the violation of the universal sanctity of
a guest or suppliant, the chief sins are against members of the same
household, defrauding orphans, or insulting an aged parent.(28) Behaviour
to other than blood-relations is regulated by expediency, by what you may
expect in return from your neighbours.(29)
Whether the family is to be regarded as the chief factor in the
composition of the city, or how much of its composition the city owes to
direct inheritance from the tribal system, must, as has been said, be left
unsolved. Some small light may perhaps be shed upon the problem as this
inquiry proceeds.
(M21) At any rate, if the true basis of the organisation of the family and
the kindred, as found in historic times in Greece, could once be
established, material assistance ought to have been gained for rightly
understanding the structure of that earlier society, whatever it was, from
which the rules, that govern those within the bond of kinship, were
survivals.