"The duty of guarding ancestral tombs was widely felt in Classical antiquity, and needs no illustration; indeed, the mighty dead lived for them in another world than the one we know, but their presence was felt, and their help gained.It was no light matter for the Athenians to gaze from the wooden walls of their ships towards the stone walls of their abandoned city, and to know that their enemies were trampling upon each hallowed sanctuary".[Roberts,'Patriotic Poetry']

Nietzsche saw the importance of ancestors from his profoundly philosophical perspective;"Within the original tribal community - we are speaking of primeval times - the living generation always recognised a juridical duty toward earlier generations, and especially toward the earliest, which founded the tribe (and by no means a merely sentimental obligation: there are actually reasons for denying the existence of the latter for the greater part of human history).The conviction reigns that it is only through the sacrifices and accomplishments of the ancestors that the tribe EXISTS - and that one has to PAY THEM BACK with sacrifices and accomplishments: one thus recognises a DEBT that constantly grows greater, since these forebears never cease, in their continued existence as powerful Spirits, to accord the tribe new advantages and new strength".[Nietzsche GM II 19]

It should be remembered that the Slave has always been deracinated, uprooted, atomised, without heritage, without tradition, without culture; - something like modern democratic man!