* of cuuBiwral xe) comuvrrei, where the two names are em- braced under the common article, and thus identified: see Ziebarth, Griech. Vereinswesen, pp. 52, 206. The subject is treated more fully in Histor. Com. on Corinthians, § xxxi. ff., in the Fapositor, Dec. 1900.
+ dzeiro xwundoyv is the expression of Strabo.
t Histor. Com. on Galatians, p. 40.
RELIGION OF GREECE
RELIGION OF GREECE 133
Ee a a ea ca
and it is probable that the inheritance passed in the female line, and the king reigned as consort of the heiress.* The natural inference that the same practice existed in the ancient empire of the cen- tral plateau, whose chief city was at Boghaz-Keui, and in the later kingdom of Tyana, is valueless, while we have no information as to the relation of this chief priest-king to the priests of the many sacred centres throughout. the land (each of which was, presumably, a small theocracy for its sur- rounding village or villages). The supposition that the empire consisted of a loose aggregate of separ- ate theocracies would not account for the great size and imperial character of the city at Boghaz- Keui; and we are at present reduced to mere conjecture; but evidence is likely to be dis- covered, when the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the country are deciphered.
(8) Household protegés.—A class of persons who are called in documents of the Roman period by various names, alumni, Operrol, Opéupara, Operrd, are frequently mentioned in Asia Minor. In the Roman period they are identified almost com- pletely with foundlings, 7.c. infants exposed by their parents and brought up as a speculation by strangers with a view to selling them for profit: such foundlings were not peculiar to Asia Minor, but known generally over the Empire, and re- scripts relating to them were issued by Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian for the province of Achaia, and by Trajan for Bithynia,} and their status and rights formed a frequent subject for Imperial legislation. But in the inscriptions of Asia Minor these protegés are mentioned so frequently in ore as to prove clearly that under that name is included also some class of persons peculiarly characteristic of the country. They are generally mentioned immediately after the children, and are sometimes distinguished from and mentioned before slaves, so that it is hardly possible to regard them as verne, slaves born and brought up in the household, although we would not deny that the term possibly may sometimes have that significa- tion. This class is at present of quite unknown character and origin, but probably it takes us back to a primitive custom — some Anatolian institution similar to, yet distinct from, the Roman clientela. In a Bithynian inscription, a husband and wife and their protectress (Opévaca jjudév used as a noun) have a common tomb: all three have the same nomen, which the two @péuuara must have received from the protectress ; but the two were not the children of the protectress either by nature or adoption, for they were free to marry one another. The inscription, No. 36, in Cities and Bish. of Phrygia, shows a case in which a child had been exposed in accordance with a dream and brought up by another person, and yet the parents retain some rights over him. The tie uniting the protegé and the protector was evidently a close and sacred one; but the sub- ject is one for further investigation, and nothing positive can yet be laid down with regard to it.
(9) Religious influences on social conditions.— While immigration, war, and conquest are favour- able to the male sex, it may conversely be assumed that the high position of women and the influence exercised by, and respect paid to, the mother in the primitive Anatolian system, imply the long continuance of a peaceful condition amid a settled and, so to say, autochthonous people, such that the importance of motherly care in promoting
social development had full opportunity to make |
itself thoroughly appreciated. : In our brief survey of the prominent features of
*The evidence is collected by Gelzer in Rhein. Musewm, XXXy. p. 519 ff. (cf. xxx. p. 5). ie tees + Pliny, Ep. ad Traj. 65, 66; Cities and Bish. ii. p. 546.
the primitive Anatolian religion, it has become clear that this religion was originally a consecra- tion of the rules and practices which were useful and almost necessary in actual life. While it can- not be proved in detail, yet all the evidence points to the conclusion, that in this religion the life of a simple community was ordered and_ prescribed from birth to death in a series of religious formule for personal conduct, personal purity, relation to others in the family and the community, manage- ment of the household and of agriculture and farm economy. A great deal which, in recent times, has ceased to be familiar to the poorest and the least educated classes was, in that early time, enforced on all as obligatory religious ceremonial. In modern times this growing ignorance of the fundamental principles on which comfort, pro- priety, and happiness in life depend, is felt to be a serious danger alike among the most civilized peoples: and in the less civilized Christian nations ike the Russian. It cannot be denied that the tendency of the Christian Church to concentrate teaching on theoretical dogma and Church ritual, and to lose hold on the practical household life of the people, has contributed to spread this ignor- ance by gradually allowing the ancient stock of practical household wisdom to fall into oblivion, and sometimes even actively discouraging it as involved with superstition.