§ 1. The Duty Of Maintenance Of Parents During Life, And After Death At Their Tomb. (M22) As the hearth was the centre of the sanctity and reverence of the family, so the word οἶκος was the customary term to signify the smaller group of the composite γένος, consisting of a man and his immediate descendants. In the first place, the individual was absolutely committed to sacrifice all his personal feelings for the sake of the continuity of his οἶκος, and this was his supreme duty. But whereas several οἶκοι traced their descent from a common ancestor, a group of gradually diverging lines of descent were formed, sharing mutually the responsibility of the maintenance of continuity, and the privilege of inheritance and protection. Before examining how far these parallel lines remained within the reach of claims of kinship, or how soon the reverence for the more immediate predecessors absorbed the memory of the more remote ancestor, it will be well to have a clear understanding of what the claims of kindred were, and how they affected the member of the οἶκος, in respect of his duties thereto. (M23) Plato(30) declares that honour should be given to:— 1. Olympian Gods. 2. Gods of the State. 3. Gods below. 4. Demons and Spirits. 5. Heroes. 6. Ancestral Gods. 7. _Living Parents_, “to whom we have to pay the greatest and oldest of all debts: in property, in person, in soul; paying the debts due to them for the care and travail which they bestowed on us of old in the days of our infancy, and which we are now to pay back to them when they are old and in the extremity of their need.” (M24) The candidates for the archonship were asked, among other things, whether they treated their parents properly.(31) It was only in case of some indelible stain, such as wife-murder, that the debt of maintenance of the parent was cancelled.(32) Yet even when the father had lost his right of maintenance by crime or foul treatment, the son was still bound to bury him when he died and to perform all the customary rites at his tomb.(33) “Is it not,” says Isaeus, “a most unholy thing, if a man, without having done any of the customary rites due to the dead, yet expects to take the inheritance of the dead man’s property?”(34) (M25) The duty of maintenance of the parent thus extended even beyond the tomb, and this retrospective attitude of the individual gives us the clue to his position of responsibility also with regard to posterity. The strongest representation possible of this attitude is given in the _Ordinances of Manu_, where it is stated that a man “goes to hell” who has no son to offer at his death the funeral cake. (M26) “No world of heaven exists for one not possessed of a son.” The debt, owed by the living member of a family to his _manes_, was to provide a successor to perform the rites necessary to them after his own death.