Читать книгу The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery. How it came into the world and how it shall be made to go out онлайн

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The power of fathers over their children was quite as absolute amongst the early Greeks and Romans as amongst the Jews; and if it did not descend to so late a period of their annals, it is only because aristocratic forms gave place sooner to democratic, under their government, than amongst the Jews. That it existed in full force at the time of the Trojan war is forcibly demonstrated by the sacrifice of Iphigenia, which, as an historical fact, is a tradition corresponding exactly with the sacrifice by Abraham. In Sparta it prevailed as completely, in the days of Lycurgus, as it did in Judæa in the patriarchal times. Plutarch relates that, at that epoch, a sort of family council was usually held upon the birth of a child, to deliberate whether the newly born should be allowed to live or die. Even at Athens, where the democratic element prevailed more than at Sparta, and where humanity and refinement, the offspring of arts and letters, had made greater progress, the absolute power of parents was such that, even as late as the age of Solon, the Athenians were in the habit of selling their children for slaves—a practice which, Plutarch informs us, there was no law to prohibit. Let us here observe generally, that it was in the Homeric period that the absoluteness of parental authority displayed itself with the most vigour in Greece, and that this period corresponds exactly, in the history of their comparative legislation, with the patriarchal epoch of the Jews. For example, daughters were so completely identified with the chattels or property of their fathers, that their suitors had always to pay a certain price for marrying and taking them away. Thus, Jacob served Laban for seven years to obtain his daughter Rachel; and thus, among the Greeks, Othryon engaged to serve Priam during the siege of Troy, to obtain his daughter Cassandra without paying a dowry—that is, without buying her otherwise than by his services. Instances of this kind might be multiplied; but enough has been said to illustrate our position. Let us observe, however, as a general rule, that paternal authority was always greatest in the states most aristocratically constituted, and always least in those most democratically constituted; and that the period through which the absoluteness of paternal power prevailed was longer or shorter, in different countries, just according to the later or earlier development given to the democratic principle in their institutions. Such a barbarous power being utterly irreconcilable with liberty and justice, it could flourish only in times of ignorance and brute force. As democracy arose, and civilization spread, the parental despotism declined. It lasted longer in Judæa than in Sparta, and longer in Sparta than in Athens; because the barbarism of oligarchy pervaded longer in Judæa than in Sparta, and longer in Sparta than in Athens.