The Greeks were not sympathetic with children nor with the aged. Far from being anxious to preserve the life of the aged, their greatest trouble was in disposing of them. The honor and rights of women were not observed. In war women {212} were the property of their captors. Yet the home life of the Greeks seems to have been in its purity and loyalty an advance on the Oriental home life. In their treatment of servants and slaves, in the care of the aged and helpless, the Greeks were cold and without compassion. While the poets, historians, and philosophers have been portraying with such efficiency the character of the higher classes; while they have presented such a beautiful exterior of the old Greek life; the Greeks, in common with other primitive peoples, were not lacking in coarseness, injustice, and cruelty in their internal life. Here, as elsewhere in the beginnings of civilization, only the best of the real and the ideal of life was represented, while the lower classes were suffering a degraded life. The family was closely organized in Greece. Monogamic marriage and the exclusive home life prevailed at an early time. The patriarchal family, in which the oldest male member was chief and ruler, was the unit of society. Within this group were the house families, formed whenever a separate marriage took place and a separate altar was erected. The house religion was one of the characteristic features of Greek life. Each family had its own household gods, its own worship, its private shrine. This tended to unify the family and promote a sacred family life. A special form of ancestral worship, from the early Aryan house-spirit worship, prevailed to a certain extent. The worship of the family expanded with the expansion of social life. Thus the gens, and the tribe, and the city when founded, had each its separate worship. Religion formed a strong cement to bind the different social units of a tribe together. The worship of the Greeks was associated with the common meal and the pouring of libations to the gods.