The functions or activities and powers of governments, which were formerly vested in the patriarchal chief, or king, and later in king, people, and council, gradually became separated and were delegated to different authorities, though the sharp division of legislative, judicial, and executive functions which characterizes our modern governments did not exist. These forms of government were more or less blended, and it required centuries to distribute the various powers of government into special departments and develop modern forms. _In Primitive Society Religion Occupied a Prominent Place_.--While kinship was first in order in the foundation of units of social organization, religion was second to it in importance. {114} Indeed, it is considered by able writers as the foundation of the family and, as the ethnic state is but the expanded family, the vital power in the formation of the state. Among the Aryan tribes religion was a prominent feature of association. In the Greek household stood the family altar, resting upon the first soil in possession of the family. Only members of the household could worship at this shrine, and only the eldest male members of the family in good standing could conduct religious service. When the family grew into the gens it also had a separate altar and a separate worship. Likewise, the tribe had its own worship, and when the city was formed it had its own temple and a particular deity, whom the citizens worshipped. In the ancient family the worship of the house spirit or a deified ancestor was the common practice. This practice of the worship of departed heroes and ancestors, which prevailed in all of the various departments of old Greek society, tended to develop unity and purity of family and tribe. As family forms passed into political, the religion changed from a family to a national religion.