136
JOHN KARL EVANS
There is no particular reason why these competing points of view should be regarded as mutually exclusive, and this should be kept in mind when one turns to the Roman material. Here our best source is undoubtedly Cicero, for he defines how one acquires responsibility for the dead with great precision. Once again, the critical passage is to be found in the essay On the Laws (2.48):
Clearly our laws on this subject derive from the authority of the pontiffs, who imposed the performance of the rites on those to whom the property passes so that the memory of his ascendants may not perish on the death of the father of the family. After this single rule was laid down, itself quite adequate for an understanding of the proper procedure, innumerable others have come into existence and filled the books of the jurists. For they attempt to fix with exactness the persons who are obligated to perform the rites. This responsibility is altogether just in the case of the natural heirs, for there is no one who more truly takes the place of the dead. Next comes the person who, either by a death-bed gift or a will, receives as much of the estate as all the natural heirs combined... In the third place, if there is no heir, the man who acquires by possession the ownership of the greater part of the property that was in the possession of the deceased at the moment of his demise is bound by the obligation. In the fourth place, if no one acquires any of the property of the deceased, then the obligation falls upon that one of the creditors who retains most of the estate.
The cult of the dead in late republican Rome, then, seems to be governed by the same principles that Ahern uncovered in Ch'i-nan: the natural heirs have an obvious duty, but only so long as they receive at least half of their father's property. It is the latter that is the crucial element in both communities; Cicero's remark that a creditor might in the end legally be required to continue the cult of his debtor's ascendants, for example, is strongly reminiscent of Ahern's claim that one could contract an obligation to care for the deceased simply by using his property. The lack of uniformly defined obligations at the village level even on the relatively small island of Taiwan,
136
JOHN KARL EVANS
There is no particular reason why these competing points of view should be regarded as mutually exclusive, and this should be kept in mind when one turns to the Roman material. Here our best source is undoubtedly Cicero, for he defines how one acquires responsibility for the dead with great precision. Once again, the critical passage is to be found in the eassy On the Laws (2.48):
Clearly our laws on this subject derive from the authority of the pontiffs, who imposed the performance of the rites on those to whom the property passes so that the memory of his ascendants may not perish on the death of the father of the family. After this single rule was laid down, itself quite adequate for an understanding of the proper procedure, innumerable others have come into existence and filled the books of the jurists. For they attempt to fix with exactness the persons who are obligated to perform the rites. This responsi- bility is altogether just in the case of the natural heirs, for there is no one who more truly takes the place of the dead. Next comes the person who, either by a death-bed gift or a will, receives as much of the estate as all the natural heirs combined... In the third place, if there is no heir, the man who acquires by possession the ownership of the greater part of the property that was in the possession of the deceased at the moment of his demise is bound by the obligation. In the fourth place, if no one acquires any of the property of the deceased, then the obligation falls upon that one of the creditors who retains most of the estate.
The cult of the dead in late republican Rome, then, seems to be governed by the same principles that Ahern uncovered in Ch'i-nan: the natural heirs have an obvious duty, but only so long as they receive at least half of their father's property. It is the latter that is the crucial element in both communities; Cicero's remark that a creditor might in the end legally be required to continue the cult of his debtor's ascendants, for example, is strongly reminiscent of Ahern's claim that one could contract an obligation to care for the deceased simply by using his property. The lack of uniformly defined obligations at the village level even on the relatively small island of Taiwan,
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