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Introduction: The Origin of Society
“How did society begin?” This question, undoubtedly on account of its importance, has been the source of much debate ever since men were far enough removed from the first society to ask this very question. Perhaps these debates were no more fierce than during the so-called “Enlightenment” period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with various learned men and their disciples quarreling—with profound implications—over their reconstructions of how early man lived and the origins of the first societies.
Among these, the most prevalent to this day have been the imaginings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who held that man before society, in the “state of nature”, preferred solitude and lived thus equally alone from his fellow men. However, there came a point, according to his reasoning, that enough of these lone wanderers decided to form society—but not before debating the conditions of their entrance therein, their “social contract”. The consequence was a loss of this primitive equality in exchange for the rudiments of civilization, a consequence which later followers of his took to heart, for they were eager to enact the most barbaric acts imaginable in Paris, the city which was for many Europeans the symbol of civilization itself.
This process has also been seen with the legacy of the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, which have also been the source of much debate. For the “Enlightenment” philosophers and their intellectual heirs, ancient Greece and Rome were the originators of democracy and free thought. Religion, according to these interpreters, mattered very little to these peoples, and it was not until the advent of Christianity that the subject of religion came to dominate the minds of Western man.
It is these misrepresentations of our past that the nineteenth-century academic Numa Fustel de Coulanges set out to correct in his monumental study The Ancient City, a brilliant exploration and reconstruction of the remote ages of the Indo-European man and the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome. As Coulanges remarks, many men of his century “deceived themselves about the liberty of the ancients, and on this very account liberty among the moderns has been put in peril” (11).1 The trouble is no different in our century—thus Coulanges’ relevance is not only purely historical, it is political. In direct contradiction to the deceptions to which the author refers, he establishes on the firmest ground that survived to his time that society was not the result of a social contract, but a religious bond. This bond, as his thesis stipulates, formed not only the basis of the ancient social order among the Indo-European, but also his family structure and institutions:2
(13)
A comparison of beliefs and laws shows that a primitive religion constituted the Greek and Roman family, established marriage and paternal authority, fixed the order of relationship, and consecrated the right of property, and the right of inheritance. This same religion, after having enlarged and extended the family, formed a still larger association, the city, and reigned in that as it had reigned in the family. From it came all the institutions, as well as all the private law, of the ancients. It was from this that the city received all its principles, its rules, its usages, and its magistracies. But, in the course of time, this ancient religion became modified or effaced, and private law and political institutions were modified with it. Then came a series of
revolutions, and social changes regularly followed the development of knowledge.
This may seem to be a revolutionary thesis, but it only appears so because our history has been largely written by the revolutionists who have sought to erase the truth that society was fundamentally religious in its origin. Religion was never an accessory to civilization; it was (and is still) its animus, its soul.
A false religion, though it may contain some truths, will inevitably spiral into ruin and bring a people down with it, if it is not vanquished by the light of Faith. As shall be illustrated, this was precisely the danger that confronted the Greco-Roman civilization of the Roman Empire—a danger that was providentially averted by the work of the Church. For she did not limit herself to salvaging from that civilization what could be salvaged, but regenerated it for the future.
The Religious Origin of the Indo-European Family
The primitive religion that gave rise to the Indo-European family structure was rooted not in the belief in the true God and the promise of a Redeemer, but in an ancestor worship centered upon offering repasts and sacrifices to the departed, who were held to be gods. It was a departure from the primordial religion that preceded the Old Covenant, but it is unknown when that ancient schism took place—and it is unknown because the rise of this creed went unrecorded.
The archaic Indo-Europeans, or Aryans as they are also known, did not possess writing; their later descendants who learned that art recorded prayers and beliefs that had been passed down, from generation to generation, solely by means of oral tradition. Of this religion’s age, it can therefore only be stated with certitude that this creed emerged in that time which the author describes as “the dim and distant epoch when there were yet no Greeks, no Italians, no Hindus; when there were only Aryas” (29).3
Unlike later developments in Greco-Roman paganism, this religion held the burial of the body to be essentially sacred, as Coulanges remarks:4
(16)
The rites of sepulture show clearly that when a body was buried, those ancient peoples believed that they buried something that was living. Virgil, who always describes religious ceremonies with so much care and precision, concludes the account of the funeral of Polydorus in these words: “We enclose the soul in the grave.” The same expression is found in Ovid, and in Pliny the Younger; this did not correspond to the ideas which these writers had of the soul, but from time immemorial it had been perpetuated in the language, attesting an ancient and common belief.
The dead were not believed to have departed to some other spiritual realm, but to the soil beneath their burial site, over which the house and hearth were constructed.5 Yet these souls were not stationary there. They would help those who venerated them—but such veneration was not open to all. Only one had been born into or joined a family could venerate the deified ancestors of that family, which were given the names demons or heroes by the Greeks and Lares, Manes, and Genii by the Latins.6
The happiness of these deified men was, however, not guaranteed based on their virtues. Nor were evil men considered to have entered eternal unhappiness on the basis of their vices. It was the burial, the flame, and the ability for the family cult to perpetuate itself that mattered, not a transcendent morality.
The power of these deities would diminish if the family cult was not perpetuated; if the father did not offer the proper sacrifices and repasts before their tombs and sacred fire, or if he had no son who could or would continue them.7 Moreover, these souls would be made miserable if they were refused burial. Such a belief has echoes even into our modern age, as the author aptly explains:8
The soul that had no tomb had no dwelling-place. It was a wandering spirit…From this came the belief in ghosts. All antiquity was persuaded that without burial the soul was miserable, and that by burial it became forever happy.
(17)
Another source of disturbance to these souls was the possibility that their grave sites could be robbed or otherwise tarnished by intruders. These souls were believed to be capable of haunting those who had dishonored them. Hence the disgust the Romans had for desecrating the graves of any person—which is why the body of St. Peter, buried near the Circus of Nero, was never desecrated by the pagans, not even during the fiercest persecutions of the Church by the emperors. For even in those later centuries, although the Romans had departed considerably from the Indo-European religion, the buried dead were still held as sacred beings who would torment those who disrupted their rest.
It was this law of venerating the dead that formed the law of the living. The cult of the sacred fire, which, as Coulanges relates, “represented the ancestors” and was “the providence of a family” required a hearth in each home (37).9 This hearth required priests to sacrifice before it: and this priesthood was hereditary, passed down from the father to the eldest son.10
Marriage was procured for this religious reason, as the author summates that, for the Indo-European, marriage “was the union of two beings in the same domestic worship, in order to produce from them a third who would be qualified to continue the worship” (51).11 Husband and wife, these “two beings” which were to bring forth the third, were not considered equals.
The origin of this inequality has been assumed by some to be that the ancient men were boorish brutes who used their mere strength, the principle of “might makes right”, to rule over their women. Such a view has no root in authentic history. The subjection of the wife to the husband was not founded on natural grounds alone; it was, like marriage itself, founded on the basis of this religion. As proof of this point Coulanges observes:12
(88)
What proves this is, that a woman who had not been married according to the sacred rites, and who, consequently, had not been associated in the worship, was not subject to the marital power. It was marriage which created this subordination, and at the same time the dignity of the wife.
This religion then established marriage among the Aryan, as it also established its end: the generation of the family cult, specifically by means of a son who could succeed the father as the familial priest.
From this need to produce a son came the rule of primogeniture. Because the oldest son was, as the author describes him, “the heir to the hymns, the continuator of the worship, the religious chief of the family” (83), the law required that he alone would inherit the property of his father.13 In the case of those fathers who could not produce a legitimate male heir,14 a ritual adoption was the last resort to prevent a family from dying out.15
As can be surmised from these details, there was no room for individualism in the societies this religion built. How could there be? The law, which admitted of no division between secular and sacred, demanded the perpetuation of the family cult to the point of proscribing any form of celibacy.16 Life was charged with a purpose for the Indo-European man; he believed that he was a member of a whole, and this whole was his family. Of this, Coulanges remarks that in such a world:17
…man did not belong to himself; he belonged to the family. He was one member in a series, and the series must not stop with him. He was not born by chance; he had been introduced into life that he might continue a worship; he must not give up life till he is sure that this worship will be continued after him.
(50-51)
According to this creed man was a member in a series, not a member of a universe. For this religion was so particular that its gods could only be invoked by those descended from them, or by those who had joined the families who worshiped them. A wife, for instance, could not ask her husband to construct a second hearth and to light another sacred flame, invoke her ancestors before it, and offer sacrifice to them alongside his own. Instead, she left behind her gods for those of her husband, just as she had left her father’s authority behind for the authority of her spouse.18
Thus, the Indo-European religion consisted of certain rules followed by all its believers, but was not a centralized, organized faith—it was a faith that had as many denominations as it had families who practiced it. However, such a state of affairs would change as the natural growth of human society would demand.
Families Develop Into Societies
Man in this initial state lived apart from other men, though in a family unit. In the Indo-European society everything had a sacred aspect, which included property: around every Aryan household there was a line of uncultivated soil, a few feet in length, which was made sacred by certain sacrifices performed by the father. Marking this holy boundary were, as the author describes them, “large stones or trunks of trees” (68),19 set there by the father. The Latins called these objects Termini, and they in time were believed to embody a god named Terminus.20 Trespassing was an act of impiety, and it was this that made it illegal. And owing to the reclusive nature of this domestic religion, the visitation of non-family members to the home must have been infrequent.
Families then lived largely isolated lives from one another in an agrarian setting: each household had its sacred enclosure, marked by the Terminus, “in which”, as Coulanges details, “the family had its house, its flocks, and the small field that it cultivated” (63).21 Owing to these circumstances, families interacted on rare occasions, such as marriage or trade. The father was the priest of this familial cult, and was succeeded by his eldest son in both this religious role and as inheritor of the property; the younger brothers were subject to him, as were the servants who joined the domestic religion by ritual initiation.22
Eventually these families grew: younger brothers formed younger branches, and these surrounded the eldest branch of a much larger family unit. New dwellings were constructed, and the sacred borders of these households were marked by their own Termini. An expansion of the family’s physical domain must have followed.
Through a process which occurred over generations of an increasing population among the Aryans, the little family would come to form several new institutions, new associations that would be modeled on the family on a grander scale. First the family would expand to form what the Romans called the gens. Secondarily, several gens would unite to form what the Greeks called the phratria and the Latins the curia. Finally, several phratries would join together to create a tribe.
Of these associations the gens is the most simple to grasp, for it was a much larger version of the family. “The best established and most prominent characteristic of the gens is,” as the author states, “that, like the family, it had a worship” (106).23 As the family worshiped its patrilineal ancestors, so too did the gens worship deified men—the only difference is in their number. The gens, while not dismantling the domestic religion, formed a religion of a shared ancestor over it. Sacrifice to this ancestor is not offered within the hearth of any given home; it is his tomb that becomes his altar.24
After the number of gens had increased, quite possibly something akin to the following scenario happened. Several neighboring gens learn of the existence of the others and, through trade, travel, and intermarriage, their people share stories of their origins in a common language. Word reaches the priests of each gens that their neighbors seem to possess a shared heritage with their own people: they thus send messengers to one another, exchange gifts, and suggest various points where they might meet. Through their messengers, they come to agree upon a time and place to gather. Upon the appointed day, each priest selects a reserve guard to protect the dwellings of his gens, a familial village or estate, and then proceeds to lead his people to the appointed place.
Each of these men, who were at once the religious and civil leaders of their communities, is afforded the opportunity to stand before everyone and recite the history and lineage of his gens in song. At the instruction of his father from boyhood, he had memorized these sacred mysteries, and they are practically encoded in his mind. But he does not reveal all their details. He invokes his gods before he speaks, and only sings the necessary portions. For he believes that a lack of propriety towards the mysteries of religion—especially before strangers—was deeply sinful,25 and even graver than other sins his gods condemned, such as lying, impurity, and murder.26
As each priest traces his fingers through the mists of time before the people, each gens comes to discover that all assembled share a progenitor who has been immortalized in memory and worship.27 The priests then consent to a union of the gens, and thus form a phratry.
They then immediately held this god to be one, as Coulanges relates, “superior to that of the household, one who was common to all, and who watched over the entire group” (118).28 Subsequently, the newly formed phratria, “raised an altar to him, lighted a sacred fire, and founded a worship” (Ibid).29 Each phratry had a worship; thus each phratry had their own priest (called a chief, curion, or phratriarch) who offered sacrifice. And as the father was the legal authority over the household, so too did these phratries possess their own tribunals, and they could even pass decrees for their community.30
As with the family, the gens, the phratry, the tribe was formed by a common worship. To form a tribe, various phratries came together, and a shared god was found in the form of a divinized ancestor from whom all parties could trace their descent. As the author describes:31
The god of the tribe was generally of the same nature as that of the phratry, or that of the family. It was a man deified, a hero. From him the tribe took its name. The Greeks called him the eponymous hero. He had his annual festal day. The principal part of the religious ceremony was a repast, of which the entire tribe partook.
(120)
Thus as with the phratry, the tribe was both a response to the expansion of society but also a driving force for a further expansion, for in this age religion defined all the legitimate associations among men.
One can imagine how, during this gradual sequence, the manner in which the Indo-European man lived departed from his initial state of isolation. No longer was his family his whole world. Men still lived on their sacred properties; but they had closer neighbors with whom they could worship in common. They would meet at an altar that was, or perhaps was constructed upon, the tomb of a venerable patriarch from whom he and his associates were descended.
The gens, the phratry, and the tribe each had their designated sanctuaries within which the heir to the most senior branch of his community offered sacrifice as priest. Each community required its members to attend these sacrifices, while it forbade the stranger from witnessing its mysteries.
It is from this world that the Indo-European man advances to another still larger society: the city.
Coulanges, Numa Fustel de. The Ancient City. Doubleday Anchor Books. 1956. Introduction. p. 11.
Ibid. Introduction. p. 13.
Ibid. Bk. I, iii. p. 29.
Ibid. Bk. I, i. p. 16.
Ibid. Bk. I, iii. p. 33.
Ibid. Bk. I, ii. p. 24.
Ibid. Bk. I, i. pp. 18-20; Ibid. Bk. I, iii. pp. 27-28.
Ibid. Bk. I, i. p. 17.
Ibid. Bk. I, iv. p. 37.
Ibid. Bk. I, iv. p. 38.
Ibid. Bk. II, iii. p. 51.
Ibid. Bk. II, viii. p. 88.
Ibid. Bk. II, vii. pp. 83-84. It must be borne in mind that this rule of primogeniture was not entirely invariable. Demonstrating this, Coulanges states:“We may remark, that the inequality of the law of primogeniture, besides the fact that it did not strike the minds of the ancients, over whom religion was all-powerful, was corrected by several of their customs. Sometimes the younger son was adopted into a family, and inherited property there; sometimes he married an only daughter; sometimes, in fine, he received some extinct family’s lot of land. When all these resources failed, younger sons were sent out to join a colony.”
By the rules of this religion, the existence of a bastard was a sacrilege against the sacred order of generation. His birth to a woman outside of the family cult made him literally godless: for like his father, the gods of the hearth were impelled to reject him. Cf. Ibid. Bk. II, iii. p. 51; Ibid. Bk. II, ix. p. 97.
Ibid. Bk. II, iv. pp. 54-56.
Ibid. Bk. II, iii. p. 50.
Ibid. Bk. II, iii. pp. 50-51.
Ibid. Bk. II, ii. p. 47.
Ibid. Bk. II, vi. p. 68.-
Ibid. Bk. II, vi. pp. 67-69. -
Ibid. Bk. II, vi. p. 63.
Ibid. Bk. II, x. pp. 114-115.
Ibid. Bk. II, x. p. 106.
Ibid.
Ibid. Bk. I, iv. p. 38.
Ibid. Bk. II, ix. p. 100. This religion even admitted of a form of ritual purification, by which a man could ritually cleanse himself in order to regain the allegiance of his gods, who were believed to abandon a man who had transgressed severely against its moral law. Cf. Ibid. Bk. II, ix. p. 96.-
This discovery could not have been a process of fiction-making, for as Coulanges explains:“One of the most rigorous rules of this religion was, that no one should honor as an ancestor any except those from whom he really descended; to offer this worship to a stranger was a grave impiety. If, then, the members of a gens adored a common ancestor, it was because they really believed they were descended from him. To counterfeit a tomb, to establish anniversaries and an annual worship, would have been to carry falsehood into what they held most dear, and to trifle with religion. Such a fiction was possible in the time of Caesar, when the old family religion was cherished by nobody. But if we go back to the time when this creed was in vigor…it would have been scouted as an impiety.”
Ibid. Bk. III, i. p. 118.
Ibid.
Ibid. Bk. III, i. p. 119.
Ibid. Bk. III, i. p. 120.