“Because men of the three (other) orders are daily supported by the householder alone with knowledge and with food, therefore the householder (is) the chief order. That order must be upheld strenuously by one desiring an imperishable heaven, and who here desires perpetual happiness....” “The seers, manes, gods, beings, and guests also make entreaty to those heads of families for support. (This duty must, therefore,) be done by a man of discernment.”(235) “As all rivers, ... go to (their) resting-place in the ocean, so men of all orders depend on the householder.”(236) Let a householder perform the household rites according to rule with the marriage fire and the accomplishment of the five sacrifices and the daily cooking. The sacrifices are:— Teaching the Veda is the Veda sacrifice: Offering cakes and water is the sacrifice to the manes: An offering to fire (is the sacrifice) to the gods: Offering of food (is the sacrifice) to all beings: Honour to guests is the sacrifice to men. “Whoever presents not food to those five, the gods, guests, dependents, the manes, and himself, though he breathe, lives not.”(237) (M119) The guest takes a very high place, and his presence is a revered addition to the family sacrifices; so much so that it was thought necessary to state definitely that “if the guest appears after the offering to all the gods is finished, one should give him food as best one can, but should not make (another) offering.”(238) The same virtue seems to have been considered by the Greeks also to lie in the presence of the guest. In Euripides’ Elektra, Aigisthos, hearing from Orestes that he and his friend are strangers, promptly invites them to share as his ξυνέστιοι in his impending sacrifice of a bull to the nymphs, promising to send them on their way in the morning.(239) Earlier in the play during the plotting of Aigisthos’ death, it is taken for granted that directly he sees them he will call them thus to join him at the sacrifice and the feast.(240) Alkinoos expresses the feeling of the Homeric age when he says: “In a brother’s place stand the stranger and the suppliant, to him whose wits have even a little range.”(241) Nestor at Pylos, making sacrifice to Poseidon with his sons and company, welcomes the unknown Telemachos and Mentor to the sacrificial feast.(242) When the duty of feeding the guests has been satisfactorily accomplished, he then asks them whether they are merchants or _pirates_, that “wander over the brine at hazard of their own lives bringing bale to alien men!” It would appear that the virtue lay in the hospitality of the host and not in the worthiness of the guest, and that therefore it was worth while to run the risk of having invited the presence of a polluted man whose impiety in not refusing to partake would doubtless fall on his own head.