Claims of priority suffuse every realm of heritage. Everyone eagerly insists their lineages, languages, fossils, even rocks are previous to those of others. But why do we care? What makes priority crucial? This chapter shows why being first seems so fundamental, and why it is so ardently claimed, and when needed invented, for so many of our legacies.

“First come, first served” expresses impartial justness. It is also a law of nature: like early birds, first-comers feed best. In heritage, maxim becomes precept. Precedence is legendarily preferred. Double portions were allotted to Old Testament firstborn sons; in primogeniture, a mode of succession long common, the eldest took all.

Not every firstborn legacy is enviable. Old Testament readiness to sacrifice eldest sons won those sons a reward in heaven, but here on earth the second-born took over. The first on line have been at gravest risk since Jehovah smote the eldest sons of Egypt and took unto himself all the firstborn of Israel. But precedence normally implies superiority and confers supremacy. Matthew's “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first” piously inverts the mundane reality. The firstborn's double portion, for some still obligatory, for many retains a primordial resonance.

The virtues of priority color every use of first. First fruits, first class, first prize, first violin, first of all, first and foremost, primate, prime minister are phrases so customary we forget their ordinal implications. The first blow is half the battle, the most important if not the only thing that counts. Caesar made no scruple “that he had rather be first in a village, than second at Rome.”