(M104) The connection of the possession of land with the headship of the family finds its counterpart in the right of maintenance of those who had the true blood of that family. And in those countries where the sons remained until their father’s death under his _patria potestas_ they had to look to him for maintenance derived from the κλῆρος which descended to him as the means of sustenance for himself and his family. Where the head of the family alone was responsible for the rites to the dead at the family altars, the position of a son would always be incomplete if he tried to establish during his father’s lifetime a hearth and household of his own. And it has been already mentioned that it was necessary to emancipate a son from the family of his own father, before he could take property, passing on the death of his mother’s relations to her issue, and assume his rightful position as their representative and the living head of their household.(205) According to Harpocration, the initiation into the mysteries of the hearth only took place on the actual assumption of the inheritance.(206) (M105) Occasionally a father feeling the weight of years would be glad to pass on to his son during his lifetime some of his burden of responsibility by making him master of his estate (κύριος τῆς οὐσίας).(207) In this case, the son would be responsible for the maintenance of his parent, a duty much insisted on by Plato and Isaeus. In fact the conclusion is justified that the family, until final subdivision into separate οἶκοι, drew its supplies from the common inheritance, and that the subdivision of the means of subsistence was contemporaneous and co-extensive with the differentiation of the various branches of the original οἶκος along the lines of the rising generations. The same may be inferred from the words of Demosthenes describing the division of the property of Bouselos amongst his sons and the foundation of their several οἶκοι. “And all these sons of Bouselos became men, and their father divided his substance amongst them all, with perfect justice. And they having shared the substance, each of them married a wife according to your laws, and there were born children to them all, and children’s children, and there grew up five οἶκοι from the one οἶκος of Bouselos, and each dwelt apart, having his own house and his own offspring.”(208) In the meanwhile, before division, all sons had equal right to participate in the family goods after the father’s death, and dowries had to be paid therefrom to the daughters. The eldest brother was guardian (κύριος) of his sisters and those of his brothers who were minors, inasmuch as he succeeded to his father’s position of head of his kindred at the altars of their ancestors. But in Greece at any rate his authority over his brothers when once a division had taken place seems to have been slight if it existed at all.