The most universally human of all sentiments is that of the family. While the exact structure of the family varies between societies and culture, it always commands love and obedience which the State could only dream upon, indeed, often familiar loyalty overpowers state loyalty.
While such a problem is not common in the more modern states of the West, in ancient states it was often a great cause for concern. Based on a small citizenry and ruling over a small strectch of land as its core, relying on a family-based, subsitence farms as the basis of its economy, defection of a single large clan could be terminal. One need to think only about the fate of an early-modern state such as Scotland where the clan system was more powerful than the central government, or contemporary ones such as Afghanistan or Lybia, to comprehend the dangers which ancient governments faced if they could not subordinate the family's authority to their own.
The Family Supplanted
In ancient Hellas, in particular in Athens, the bounds of family were initially strong. Men and women were adressed by their name and that of their father (e.g. Σωκράτης γιο του Σοφρονίκοσ - Socrates son of Sophroniscus). The family in ancient Greece predated most states and had remained a source of prestige both independent and external to it.
As late as the middle of the 5th century, according to Thucidides, most Athenians lived in the countryside on their old family farms. The urbanization of Attica might have started a few decades earlier, according to Aristotle, but either way, the family clearly held significant sway over the life of Athenians. Indeed the very founding of the Athenian state was an act of συνοικισμóς, "Joining of Households", by which the various families living over the countryside of Attica had come together to create a unified City.
What could the State do to counterweight such a powerful institution? We can point out to several measures. For the sake of brevity, we would focus on Athens, but similar measures were common all over the Greek world.
The most obvious step, that in Athens was led first by Solon and than by Cleisthenes, was to create new bodies that would compete with the extended family as centers of influence and the official constituencies making up the State.
Dividing the Athenians first by income and than by geographical units, Athenian reformers set up a counterweight to the power of the immediate and extended family.
The principles the State based herself upon had weakened the family as a political unit as well. In democratic Athens, were the principle of "Equality before the Law" had reigned supreme, the family couldn't enforce its will upon reluctant or rebellious members. Thus the political potential of the family as the center of a faction was neutered.
When we examine Athenian education we find an even greater weakness in the power of the family relative to that of the state. The Athenian youth moved from instruction by his pedagogue (that was admittedly chosen by his father) to that of the Sophist mentor. Much was written about the Greek practice of pederastia, but let us just point out that it brought into a young man's life further influence of an older man whi wss not a family member. At his passage into adulthood, the father had so many competitors that he could not possibly hope to have the utmost authority in his son’s eyes. The best he could do was to retain some of his respect. And even that was often not achieved.
It is no wonder then that the main power in the formation of political faction in Classical Athens were not families and clans but rather political clubs. Some writers decried these as detrimental conspiracies, others thought them to be an essential and healthy component of the political order.
With all this said, Athens can be argued to be one of the most lenient Greek states in its attempt to weaken the family. The pedagogues and sophists were at least picked and payed by the father and young men and their fathers could resist or even demand ceasing of unwanted attention by would-be pederasts. In Sparta, the State controlled the education of the youth outright and they were so subject to the authority of their elders within it that no meaningful resistance is plausible. In Athens the purity of marriage mattered a great deal, at least on the wife's side. In Sparta, adultery was considered salutary for the good of the State if the unfortunate husband was an old man unlikely to give the State any more children. The husband would have to provide for the child nevertheless and he had no recourse.
The Magistrate-Father.
Unlike Athens and other Greek states, Rome was, according to the Roman foundation myth, not created as a union of households, but of individuals, from among the "Superflous population of Alba and Latium and the sheperds" and even fugitives seeking asylum.
The settlement had had an excess of single men, therefore, and a deficit of women in its population. This was fulfilled by acquiring women from Rome's neighbors, according to Livy and Plutarch.
If this tradition is true or false is up to wiser heads to ponder. What is clear is that the Romans believed in it and therefore, believed the Roman State to precede the Roman family and in fact to be its author.
While in Greece every attempt was made to minimize the political role of the family, in Rome the family was the center of all politics.
The authority of the father even over his adult sons was extensive. The son could only acquire property for the household, not for himself, and the father controlled all property. He could marry him off and order him to divorce his wife. He could punish disobedience, originally even by death. He could sell him to slavery.
In short, he have full control over his personal life. Therefore the fact that the son could participate in public life as an individual and even be elected magistrate did nothing to emancipate him. Only at the death of the father (and some other circumstances) did he escape his authority.
How are we to understand such system? Perhaps the best explanation is to be found in the most interesting of Roman stories about fatherhood, that of Brutus' sons.
After the expulsion of king Tarquinius Superbus and the royal family from Rome, they and their loyalists in the city continued to plot their restoration. One plot was revealed and among the conspirators were the sons of Junius Brutus, the leading man of the Revolution and the first consul:
"When the chattels of the princes had been pillaged, sentence was pronounced and punishment inflicted upon the traitors —a punishment the more conspicuous because the office of consul imposed upon a father the duty of exacting the penalty from his sons, and he who ought to have been spared even the sight of their suffering was the very man whom Fortune appointed to enforce it..
"The consuls advanced to their tribunal and dispatched the lictors to execute the sentence. The culprits were stripped, scourged with rods, and beheaded, while through it all men gazed at the expression on the father's face, where they might clearly read a father's anguish, as he administered the nation's retribution."
This version of the story shows us how the Roman state had overpowered the family and its authority- not by supplanting it, but rather by co-opting it into its very structure.
Brutus does not act merely as a Consul when he executes his sons, he acts as a father, after the Roman fashion.
For that reason he does not surpress his fatherly feelings in order to carry out the mandate of the State - the death sentence itself is an expression of them.
The Plutarch failed to understand it. While Livy give us account on how it fell to "the father to punish his sons", Plutarch tells us:
"But when they made no answer, though he put his question to them thrice, he turned to the lictors and said: ‘It is yours now to do the rest.’ These straightway seized the young men, tore off their togas, bound their hands behind their backs, and scourged their bodies with their rods.
"The rest could not endure to look upon the sight, but it is said that the father neither turned his gaze away, nor allowed any pity to soften the stern wrath that sat upon his countenance, but watched the dreadful punishment of his sons until the lictors threw them on the ground and cut off their heads with the axe. Then he rose and went away, after committing the other culprits to the judgement of his colleague. He had done a deed which it is difficult for one either to praise or blame sufficiently."
Here we can see a father that rather than exercising his authority and office as such, allow the power of the State overcome his own and hands his sons unto the State's judgment (represented by the lictors) while he watches stone-faced, as if they were strangers.
Livy, a citizen of Rome, knew the horrifying truth the Greek moralist could only suspect. In the Roman State, all was within the Republic, nothing outside of it. Not even a father's heart.
The Law of Love
In ancient Israel the relationship between parent and child was less defined than in the Greco-Roman world. While Israel had its share of kings and rulers, foreign and native, a proper State structure on the Greek, Roman or even Near-Eastern model never crystallized or asserted itself across the land.
As a result the family, who couldn't be supplanted or co-opted by the State remained the basic political unit. We find the "Heads of the (Fathers') Houses" petitioning Moses, dividing the Land of Canaan under Joshua, assembling as the People's representing body before Solomon and making a slew of political decisions at the time of Ezra.
The tribes and the tribal system, that relied upon their claim of common ancestry from the 12 eponymous fathers of the tribes, was very powerful. It is arguably the key to understand the rise and fall of the various royal houses at the First Temple Era.
- Saul refused the Crown at first out of worry that his inferior position in the tribal hierarchy would hinder his ability to assert the power of the new institution. The fall of his house started as the powerful tribe of Judah sided with David, their compatriot, rather than Saul's son. Solomon's blatant attempt to supplant the tribal system was perhaps the chief cause to the disintegration of his regime after his death, as rebellion was declared under the slogan "See to (the affairs of) your own House, O David!".
Even as the tribal structure of the nation crumbled to dust after the Babylonian Exile, the Family remained the unit of political action. We have seen the Heads of the Houses in their active role during the time of Ezra. Up the end of the Second Temple Era temple positions were held by powerful families, to the chagrin of many. This was not a practice exclusive to the Temple. in the Sanhedrin, the House of Betheira held the highest position for an unknown amount of time, to be replaced by Hillel and his descendants at the 1st century BC. The Hashmoean Revolution was largely a family affair, even the early Christian Church was headed for a time by Jesus' family.
As late as the 13th century, we see the preference for appointing sons to their father's position not only practiced but even codified in Law. As a result, even in the modern era in the more traditionalist circles importnt positions were kept in one family for generations. While in most Orthodox circles the practice was largely abandoned, among the Hassidic sects, succession to the leadership is nothing short of dynastic to this very day.
What holds the Israelite family and granted her such power?
First, let us keep in mind that Israelite society had been, from the start, extremly mobile, in geographical terms at least. The Fathers of the Nation all had to leave "Their lands, their birhplaces and their father's house" at a certain point.
The prophetic movement of the First Temple Era, as well as the great academies of the Second Temple and all later eras repesneted a mass of of young men abandining their families in a spiritual pursuit. Thus we find the Israelite family deprived of one of the great sources of familial power - stability of location. There was never something as common as a young Jew wandering and seeking his fortune, be it spiritual or material, out in the world.
Second, let us consider the economic situation. Like all subsistence farming economies, ancient Israel faced the family-farm size paradox: large families in the farmland means greater concentration of production at the present generation, leading to greater productivity, But upon the death of the father, they also mean greater division of land, which means lesser concentration of land and eventually leads to a situation where the land most families have is too small to feed them. Different cultures throughout history found different ways around the problem. Ancient Israel came up with the Fatherly Estate (the best way to translate the Hebrew term "Nahlath. Aboth") system:
The family land was to be divided by inheritance, but not equally- the firstborn son was to receive a double share. That created a natural leadership class that could be the center for mutual assistance and local-famillial collective action, but could never become so removed in wealth or blood ties from its neighbors as to create a tyrannical aristocracy.
One form that mutual assistance took was the "Redemption" of land that was sold out of the family by impoverished or extinct branches of it. This was done by richer members of the family buying it back from the purchaser.
In case the original redemptor refused to fulfill some other family obligation tied to the process by costume, it was the right and duty of the next of kin to buy the land from him. By doing that, the land became part of his inalienable estate. It is evident that such practices were in power at the eve of the destruction of the First Temple.
We know that it was common for adult men to live with their parents on the family farm and to work for them, even going so far as asking for their permission to leave.
The Fatherly Estate had had an almost sacred aura around it and heirs were extremly reluctent to part with it even under a temporary lease. There is clearly a case t be made for an economic explantion to the strong family ties in ancient Israel.
Unfortunately that case falls to pieces upon further examination of the facts. As we have shown before, it was very common for young Jews to leave their parents and seek their fortunes or their souls or both. We have very early examples that they could and did accumulate property on their own, without the parents having any claim to it. While the Christian fable of the Prodigal Son is very famous and perhaps show a common negative attitude to this sort of behavior, it merely states the risk of a common practice, while previous sources mostly talk about its positive prospects.
The Israelite family, as we have already have shown, did not grow weaker during the Babylonian Exile, when the land was lost. Its power was not diminished by the middle ages, when Jews were often forbidden outright to own land. It was not weaker among diasporic Jews than among Jews living in the Land of Israel. The strongest family sentiment existed among the priests and the Levites, who were excluded from the estate system.
The third element that might have granted the Israelite family power and importance was personal status, especially that derived from lineage. Lineage was indeed extremly important in Israelite society from the most ancient period (we mentioned Saul's fears about his future as a king due to the inferiority of his family), and determined marrriage, religious roles and obligations, even the ability to own land outright. Nevertheless, the Family still could have not extracted any coercive power from the principle of hereditary status- it could not banish anyone from the family or revoke their status. Furthermore, albeit legal standing was set in stone (despite some theoretical loophole allowing marginal improvement at the lowest level), social status could be very mobile. There was a clear way to the top of Jewish society - learning. The prestige of the Law and the esteem in which scholars, especially those who garnered a reputation for their blameless lives and righteousness as well, were held was so great, that inferior birth could have become no more than a minor embarassment, that the politic sage could even wear as a badge of honor, even an embarassing personal past could become no more than an anecdote, and a fond one at that. On the other hand, a family thatfailed to produce remarkable men for a prolongued period of time, even from the highest birth, could have sunk so low, that some would even doubt its lineage.
What is, therefore, the great fortress protecting the Israelite family to such degree?
I submit that in my opinion the decisive factor is the Law of Israel. This Law, who at the same time burdens each individual with extreme obligations while denying completly any measure of enforceablity to these status could have appealed only to One's love of family and righetousness. A moral appeal, stating clearly "this is your duty, you shall fullfil it not out of fear of punishment or hpe to reward but because it is your duty", anchoring the truth of this pronouncement in th supreme authority of God, grants the institution object to these duties a greater prestige and staying power than all the governments in the world could.
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