By Fustel de Coulanges, edited & revised by J. W. Jamieson. It was not the sky gods but a consciousness of the importance of heredity and a devotion to the Family and Kindred that provided the basis of the social and political organization of ancient Greece and Rome. Early Greek and Roman society was organized around the family and the kinship group. Citizenship was determined by birth, and aliens were not only barred from acquiring any political rights and the ownership of property but even from residence within the city except as slaves or bonded clients. Indeed, even the sky gods were personal to kinship groups, and of less significance than the Lars and Penates, the ancestral spirits and gods of the family hearth. Chapters include: The Importance of the Lineage; The Sacred Hearth Fire; Marriage and Procreation; Kinship and Property; Moral Law; Gens, Phratry, Tribe and Nation; The Domestic Religion as the Moral Foundation of the Ancient City-State. SB, 108 pages.