In fact, fathers had so much authority that Roman law, which was comprehensive in all other legal areas, left family law almost completely undeveloped. Why is this? Simply because the father was the law in his household. But what happened when the father died? In many families, he would join the pantheon of other heads of the family over the generations and be worshiped through the burning of incense at an ancestral shrine in the home. As the supreme authority over the household, fathers (and especially departed fathers) were the proper subjects of religious ritual.
