Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/83

THE BARBARIAN WORLD 47 purchased from her kindred, if two persons within the same tribe married. In this latter case the wife's kinsmen did not entirely abandon their interest in her welfare, and could in some instances offer her legal protection. As the last sentence suggests, in addition to the family the Germans had another larger social group, the Sib, or association of kinsmen. This institution was The kin- analogous to the gens of the Greeks and Romans. ship s rou P Possibly the Sib was older than the family, a relic of the time when a wandering life was led and before settlement on the land and the founding of separate households and homes took place. Members of the Sib fought side by side in battle, and stood by each other in lawsuits, providing security or compurgators, and receiving the Wergeld or damages for a slain member. 1 The Sib either itself acted as guardian of widows and orphans or appointed some individual so to act. Both nobles and slaves were to be found among the early Germans. Some of the privileges and prerogatives of the nobility will be brought out later in the course Nobility of this chapter. The slave class was made up of and slaver y captives in war, delinquent debtors, men who had gambled away their freedom or sold themselves into servitude to get something to eat and wear, the children of slaves, and slaves purchased from other tribes. The father of a family had the right to sell child or wife, if he were in dire need. By strict law the slave was a mere chattel; he could not contract a legal marriage and had no position before the law; his mas- ter was responsible for his acts and had the power of life and death over him. According to Tacitus, however, most of the servile population among the Germans had houses of their own, and paid their masters a portion of their produce, and were seldom beaten or punished; and so might better be called serfs than slaves. As war was the German's chief occupation, so the army was the oldest political organization and the Army and bearing of arms the sign and test of freedom and freedom of citizenship. Tacitus says that it is "not customary for 1 For compurgators or oath-helpers see page 51; for Wergeld see page 52.