the true political divisions of the State, the Trittyes and Naukraries of Athens (and later the Demes), and the local tribes and centuriæ of Rome, the gentes and γένη stand in most marked contrast. We can have little doubt that they were survivals from the forms of social life which preceded the State;[1] and we find in them traces of the same characteristics, which we found in the village community. On these we can only touch very briefly.
Nothing can be more certain than that the members of both γένη and gentes believed themselves to be descended from a common ancestor, and therefore to be of one blood. The very names make this at once obvious, for both are derived from a root, signifying birth, and are related to our own word Kin. In Rome all members of a gens bore the same name (Claudii, Cornelii, etc.); and both at Rome and Athens they had their common religious worship, and also in many cases the exclusive right to fill the priesthood of some important deity. Thus at Athens the gens of the Butadæ held the two great priesthoods of Athene Polias and of Poseidon Erectheus; and we may remember the Roman story of Fabius Cunctator, who left his command — with great peril, as it turned out, to the army — in the hands of his Master of the Horse, in order to return to Rome and celebrate the rites of his
1 See Schol. on Hesiod, Works and Days, v. 495 (quoted by Kuhn, Entstehung, p. 163), where 360 λέσχαι are spoken of in Athens, which may have been the original form of the later 360 γένη. Such conjectures are, however, quite uncertain, and add little or nothing to the argument.
- ↑ 1
