Note 129 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

The foll. are the expressions occurring in the speeches of Isaeus which conclusively warrant what is said above. The childless Menekles ἐσκόπει ὅπως μὴ ἔσοιτο ἄπαις, ἀλλ’ ἔσοιτο αὐτῷ ὅστις ζῶντα γηροτροφήσοι καὶ τελευτήσαντα θάψοι αὐτὸν καὶ εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον τὰ νομιζόμενα αὐτῷ ποιήσοι, 2, 10. To be cared for in old age, buried after death, and to have permanent attention paid to one’s soul is a single unified conception, in which ritual burial at the hands of one’s own ἔκγονοι (thus securing the cult of the family) does not form the least important part (cf. Pl., Hipp. ma. 291 DE: it is κάλλιστον for a man—according to the popular view—ἀφικομένῳ ἐς γῆρας τοὺς αὑτοῦ γονέας τελευτήσαντας καλῶς περιστείλαντι ὑπὸ τῶν αὑτοῦ ἐκγόνων καλῶς καὶ μεγαλοπρεπῶς ταφῆναι. Medea says to her children in E., Med. 1032 εἶχον ἐλπίδας πολλὰς ἐν ὑμῖν γηροβοσκήσειν τ’ ἐμὲ καὶ κατθανοῦσαν χερσὶν εὖ περιστελεῖν, ζηλωτὸν ἀνθρώποισιν). That he may share in this attention to the souls of the dead a man must leave behind him a son; upon a son alone this will fall as a sacred duty. Hence a man who has no son takes the chosen heir of his possessions into his own family by adoption. Inheritance and adoption invariably accompany each other in such cases (and even in the first speech, where, though nothing is actually said of adoption, it is certainly implied throughout). The motive of adoption is said in the clearest possible terms to be the desire on the part of the adopter for a permanent care of his own soul at the hands of his adopted son: 2, 25, 46; 6, 51, 65; 7, 30; 9, 7, 36. There is consequently a close connexion between εἶναι κληρονόμον καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ μνήματα ἰέναι, χεόμενοι καὶ ἐναγιοῦντα (6, 51). It is a mark of the heir τὰ νομιζόμενα ποιεῖν, ἐναγίζειν, χεῖσθαι (6, 65); cf. also D. 43, 65. Duties towards the soul of the dead consist in the son and heir’s provision for a solemn funeral, the erection of a handsome grave-monument and in his offering of the τρίτα and ἔνατα καὶ τἆλλα τὰ περὶ τὴν ταφήν: 2, 36, 37; 4, 19; 9, 4. After that he is responsible for the regular continuation of the cult and of sacrifice to the dead, ἐναγίζεσθαι καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτόν (2, 46), and generally, καὶ εἰς τὸν ἔπειτα χρόνον τὰ νομιζόμενα ποιεῖν (2, 10). Then, just as he has to carry on for the dead man his family worships, his ἱερὰ πατρῷα (2, 46: e.g. for Zeus Ktesios: 8, 16); so also he must, as the dead man once did, make regular offering to the πρόγονοι of the house: 9, 7. In this way the family cult secures its own continuity.—Everything in this reminds us in the strongest way of what is done for the continuation of the cult of the dead, esp. by adoption, in the country where ancestor-worship reaches its greatest height—China. Desire to perpetuate the family name, the strongest motive with us in the adoption of male children, could not be so strong in Greece when only individual names were usual. Even this, however, occurs as a motive for the adoption of a son, ἵνα μὴ ἀνώνυμος ὁ οἶκος αὐτοῦ γένηται, 2, 36, 46; cf. Isocr. 19, 35 (and Philodem., Mort., p. 28, 9 ff. Mekl.). The “house” at any rate is called after its ancestors (like those Βουσελίδαι of whom Dem. speaks), and if the house has no male heir this common name will disappear. Apart from this, the adopted person will call himself the son of his adoptive father, and will ensure the preservation of the latter’s name, in the well-known fashion, by giving this name to the eldest (Dem. 39, 27) of his own sons. (A similar perpetuation of a name is probably intended in E., IT. 695–8.)