The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ancient Society, by Lewis Henry Morgan

[311] “A fixed local centre was quite as necessary in the case of such a canton as in that of a clanship; but as the members of the clan, or, in other words, the constituent elements of the canton, dwelt in villages, the centre of the canton cannot have been a town or place of joint settlement in the strict sense. It must, on the contrary, have been simply a place of common assembly, containing the seat of justice and the common sanctuary of the canton, where the members of the canton met every eighth day for purposes of intercourse and amusement, and where, in case of war, they obtained a safer shelter for themselves and their cattle than in the villages; in ordinary circumstances this place of meeting was not at all or but scantily inhabited.... These cantons accordingly, having their rendezvous in some stronghold, and including a certain number of clanships, form the primitive political unities with which Italian history begins.... All of these cantons were in primitive times politically sovereign, and each of them was governed by its prince with the co-operation of the council of elders and the assembly of warriors. Nevertheless the feeling of fellowship based on community of descent and of language not only pervaded the whole of them, but manifested itself in an important religious and political institution—the perpetual league of the collective Latin cantons.”—Hist. of Rome, i, 64-66. The statement that the canton or tribe was governed by its prince with the co-operation of the council, etc., is a reversal of the correct statement, and therefore misleading. We must suppose that the military commander held an elective office, and that he was deposable at the pleasure of the constituency who elected him. Further than this, there is no ground for assuming that he possessed any civil functions. It is a reasonable, if not a necessary conclusion, therefore, that the tribe was governed by a council composed of the chiefs of the gentes, and by an assembly of the warriors, with the co-operation of a general military commander, whose functions were exclusively military. It was a government of three powers, common in the Upper Status of barbarism, and identified with institutions essentially democratical.

[312] Ap. Claudio in vinculo ducto, C. Claudius inimicum Claudiamque omnem gentem sordidatum fuisse.—Livy, vi, 20.

[313] History of Rome, i, 242.

[314] Responsum tulisse, se collecturos, quanti damnatus esset, absolvere eum non posse.—Liv., v, 32.

[315] History of Rome, i, 242: citing Dionysius, ii, 10: (ἔδει τοὺς πελάτας) τῶν ἀναλωμάτων ὡς τοὺς γένει προσήκοντας μετέχειν

[316] History of Rome, i, 240.

[317] “Nevertheless, affinity in blood always appeared to the Romans to lie at the root of the connection between the members of the clan, and still more between those of a family; and the Roman community can only have interfered with these groups to a limited extent consistent with the retention of their fundamental character of affinity.”—Mommsen’s History of Rome, i, 103.

[318] It is a curious fact that Cleisthenes of Argos changed the names of the three Dorian tribes of Sicyon, one to Hyatæ, signifying in the singular a boar; another to Oneatæ, signifying an ass, and a third to Choereatæ, signifying a little pig. They were intended as an insult to the Sicyonians; but they remained during his life-time, and for sixty years afterwards. Did the idea of these animal names come down through tradition?—See Grote’s History of Greece, iii, 33, 36.

[319] Peregrinae conditionis homines vetuit usurpare Romana nomina, duntaxat gentilicia.—Sueton., Vit. Claudius, cap. 25.

[320] Cicero, Pro Domo, cap. 13.

[321] Livy, xxv, 5.

[322] Smith’s Dic., Art. Pontifex.

[323] History of Rome, i, 66.

[324] Ib., i, 258.

[325] Livy, ii, 48.

[326] Ib., ii, 49.

[327] Trecentos sex perisse satis convenit: unum prope pubescem aetate relictum stirpem gente Fabiae, dubiisque rebus populi Romani sepe domi bellique vel maximum futurum auxilium.—Livy, ii, 50; and see Ovid, Fasti, ii, 193.

[328] Itaque, quum populum in curias triginta divideret, nomina earum curiis imposuit.—Livy, i, 13.

[329] φράτρα δὲ καὶ λόχος ἡ κουρία. —Dionys., Antiq. of Rome, ii, 7.

[330]

διῄρηντο δὲ καὶ εἰς δεκάδας αἱ φρᾶτραι πρὸς αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἡγεμὼν ἑκάστην ἐκόσμει δεκάδαρχος κατὰ τὴν ἐπιχώριον γλῶτταν προσαγορευόμενος. —Dionys., ii, 7.

[331] Ἑκάστη δὲ φυλὴ δέκα φρατρίας εἶχεν, ἃς ἔνιοι λέγουσιν ἐπωνύμους εἶναι ἐκείνων τῶν γυναικῶν.—Plutarch, Vit. Romulus, cap. 20.

[332] Whether Niebuhr used the word “house” in the place of gens, or it is a conceit of the translators, I am unable to state. Thirlwall, one of the translators, applies this term frequently to the Grecian gens, which at best is objectionable.

[333] History of Rome, i, 244.

[334] Dionysius has given a definite and circumstantial analysis of the organization ascribed to Romulus, although a portion of it seems to belong to a later period. It is interesting from the parallel he runs between the gentile institutions of the Greeks, with which he was equally familiar, and those of the Romans. In the first place, he remarks, I will speak of the order of his polity which I consider the most sufficient of all political arrangements in peace, and also in time of war. It was as follows: After dividing the whole multitude into three divisions, he appointed the most prominent man as a leader over each of the divisions; in the next place dividing each of the three again into ten, he appointed the bravest men leaders, having equal rank; and he called the greater divisions tribes, and the less curiæ, as they are also still called according to usage. And these names interpreted in the Greek tongue would be the tribus, a third part, a phylê (φυλὴ); the curia, a phratry (φράτρα), and also a band (λόχος); and those men who exercised the leadership of the tribes were both phylarchs (φύλαρχοι) and trittyarchs (τριττύαρχοι), whom the Romans call tribunes; and those who had the command of the curiæ both phratriarchs (φρατρίαρχοι) and lochagoi (λοχαγοὶ), whom they call curiones. And the phratries were also divided into decades, and a leader called in common parlance a decadarch (δεκάδαρχος) had command of each. And when all had been arranged into tribes and phratries, he divided the land into thirty equal shares, and gave one full share to each phratry, selecting a sufficient portion for religious festivals and temples, and leaving a certain piece of ground for common use.—Antiq. of Rome, ii, 7.

[335] Dionysius, ii, 7.

[336] Smith’s Dic., l. c., Art. Tribune.

[337] Dionysius, ii, 7.

[338] The thirty curiones, as a body, were organized into a college of priests, one of their number holding the office of curio maximus. He was elected by the assembly of the gentes. Besides this was the college of augurs, consisting under the Ogulnian law (300 B. C.) of nine members, including their chief officer (magister collegii); and the college of pontiffs, composed under the same law of nine members, including the pontifex maximus.

[340] Eo ex finitimis populis turba omnis sine discrimine, liber an servus esset, avida novarum rerum perfugit; idque primum ad coeptam magnitudinem roboris fuit.—Livy, i, 8.

[341] Vit. Romulus, cap. 20.

[342] Antiq. of Rome, ii, 15.

[343] Livy, i, 30.

[345] Livy, i, 38.

[346] In the pueblo houses in New Mexico all the occupants of each house belonged to the same tribe, and in some cases a single joint-tenement house contained a tribe. In the pueblo of Mexico there were four principal quarters, as has been shown, each occupied by a lineage, probably a phratry; while the Tlatelulcos occupied a fifth district. At Tlascala there were also four quarters occupied by four lineages, probably phratries.

[347] History of Rome, i, 258.

[348] Centum creat senatores: sive quia is numerus satis erat; sive quia soli centum erant, qui creari Patres possent, Patres certe ab honore, patriciique progenies eorum appellati.—Liv., i, 8. And Cicero: Principes, qui appellati sunt propter caritatem, patres.—De Rep., ii, 8.

[349] Dionysius, ii, 47.

[350] Nec minus regni sui firmandi, quam augendae republicae, memor, centum in Patres legit; qui deinde minorum gentium sunt appellati: factio haud dubia regis, cuius beneficio in curiam venerant.—Liv., i, 35.

[351] Isque [Tarquinius] ut de suo imperio legem tulit, principio duplicavit illum pristinum patrum numerum; et antiquos patres maiorum gentium appellavit, quos priores sententiam rogabat; a se adscitos, minorum.—Cicero, De Rep., ii, 20.

[352] Cicero, De Rep., ii, 20.

[353] This was substantially the opinion of Niebuhr. “We may go further and affirm without hesitation, that originally, when the number of houses [gentes] was complete, they were represented immediately by the senate, the number of which was proportionate to theirs. The three hundred senators answered to the three hundred houses, which was assumed above on good grounds to be the number of them; each gens sent its decurion, who was its alderman and the president of its meetings to represent it in the senate.... That the senate should be appointed by the kings at their discretion, can never have been the original institution. Even Dionysius supposes that there was an election: his notion of it, however, is quite untenable, and the deputies must have been chosen, at least originally, by the houses and not by the curiæ.”—Hist. of Rome, i, 258. An election by the curiæ is, in principle, most probable, if the office did not fall to the chief ex officio, because the gentes in a curia had a direct interest in the representation of each gens. It was for the same reason that a sachem elected by the members of an Iroquois gens must be accepted by the other gentes of the same tribe before his nomination was complete.

[354] Livy, i, 43. Dionys., ii, 14; iv, 20, 84.

[355] Numa Pompilius (Cicero, De Rep., ii, 11; Liv., i, 17), Tullus Hostilius (Cicero, De Rep., ii, 17), and Ancus Martius (Cic., De Rep., ii, 18; Livy, i, 32) were elected by the comitia curiata. In the case of Tarquinius Priscus, Livy observes that the people by a great majority elected him rex (i, 35). It was necessarily by the comitia curiata. Servius Tullius assumed the office which was afterwards confirmed by the comitia (Cicero, De Rep., ii, 21). The right of election thus reserved to the people, shows that the office of rex was a popular one, and that his powers were delegated.

[356] Mr. Leonhard Schmitz, one of the ablest defenders of the theory of kingly government among the Greeks and Romans, with great candor remarks: “It is very difficult to determine the extent of the king’s powers, as the ancient writers naturally judged of the kingly period by their own republican constitution, and frequently assigned to the king, the senate, and the comitia of the curia the respective powers and functions which were only true in reference to the consuls, the senate and the comitia of their own time.”—Smith’s Dic. Gk. & Rom. Antiq., Art. Rex.

[357] Dionys., ii, 12.

[358] Dionysius, iv, 1.

[359] Niebuhr says: “The existence of the plebs as acknowledgedly a free and very numerous portion of the nation, may be traced back to the reign of Ancus; but before the time of Servius it was only an aggregate of unconnected parts, not a united regular whole.”—History of Rome, l. c., i, 315.

[360] History of Rome, i, 315.

[361] “That the clients were total strangers to the plebeian commonalty and did not coalesce with it until late, when the bond of servitude had been loosened, partly from the houses of their patrons dying off or sinking into decay, partly from the advance of the whole nation toward freedom, will be proved in the sequel of this history.”—History of Rome, i, 315.

[362] Dionysius, ii, 8.

[363] Plutarch, Vit. Rom., xiii, 16.

[364] Vit. Tiberius, cap. 1.

[365] Hist. of Rome, i, 256, 450.

[366] Smith’s Dic., Articles Gens, Patricii, and Plebs.

[367] Dionysius, ii, 8; Plutarch, Vit. Rom., xiii.

[369] Quum ille Romuli Senatus, qui constabat ex optimatibus, quibus ipse Rex tantum tribuisset, ut eos patres vellet nominari patriciosque eorum liberos, tentaret, etc.—De Rep., ii, 12.

[370] Patres certe ab honore, patriciique progenies eorum appellati.—Liv., i, 8.

[371] Hic centum homines electos, appellatosque Patres, instar habuit consilii publici. Hanc originem nomen Patriciorum habet.—Velleius Paterculus, i, 8.

[372] Livy, ii, 49.

[373] History of Rome, i, 246.

[374] Ib., i, 246.

[375] Livy, iv, 4.

[376] A plebe consensu populi consulibus negotium mandatur.—Liv., iv. 51.

[377] Ἦν δὲ ἡ διανομὴ κατὰ τὰς τέχνας, αὐλητῶν, χρυσοχόων, τεκτόνων, βαφέων, σκυτοτόμων, σκυτοδεψῶν, χαλκέων, κεραμέων.—Plutarch, Vit. Numa, xvii, 20.

[378] The property qualification for the first class was 100,000 asses; for the second class, 75,000 asses; for the third, 50,000; for the fourth, 25,000; and for the fifth, 11,000 asses.—Livy, i, 43.

[379] Dionysius, iv, 20.

[380] Ib., iv, 16, 17, 18.

[381] Livy, i, 43.

[382] De Rep., ii, 20.

[383] Dionysius, iv, 16.

[384] Livy, i, 43.

[385] Livy, i, 43. But Dionysius places the equites in the first class, and remarks that this class was first called.—Dionys., iv, 20.

[386] Livy, i, 44; Dionysius states the number at 84,700.—iv, 22.

[387] Cicero, De Rep., ii, 20.

[388] Censum enim instituit, rem saluberrimam tanto futuro imperio: ex quo belli pacisque munia non viritim, ut ante, sed pro habitu pecuniarum fierent.—Livy, i, 42.

[389] Dionysius, iv, 15.

[390] Dionysius, iv, 14.

[391] History of Rome, l. c., Scribner’s ed., i, 136.

[392] Dionysius, iv, 15; Niebuhr has furnished the names of sixteen country townships, as follows: Aemilian, Camilian, Cluentian, Cornelian, Fabian, Galerian, Horatian, Lemonian, Menenian, Paperian, Romilian, Sergian, Veturnian, Claudian.—Hist. of Rome, i, 320, note.

[393] Rawlinson’s Herodotus, i, 173.

[394] If a Seneca-Iroquois man marries a foreign woman their children are aliens; but if a Seneca-Iroquois woman marries an alien, or an Onondaga, their children are Iroquois of the Seneca tribe; and of the gens and phratry of their mother. The woman confers her nationality and her gens upon her children, whoever may be their father.

[395] Description of Ancient Italy, i, 153; citing Lanzi, ii, 314.

[396] History of Greece, Scribner & Armstrong’s ed., Ward’s Trans., i, 94, note. The Etiocretes, of whom Minos was the hero, were doubtless Pelasgians. They occupied the east end of the Island of Crete. Sarpedon, a brother of Minos, led the emigrants to Lycia where they displaced the Solymi, a Semitic tribe probably; but the Lycians had become Hellenized, like many other Pelasgian tribes, before the time of Herodotus, a circumstance quite material in consequence of the derivation of the Grecian and Pelasgian tribes from a common original stock. In the time of Herodotus the Lycians were as far advanced in the arts of life as the European Greeks (Curtius, i, 93; Grote, i, 224). It seems probable that descent in the female line was derived from their Pelasgian ancestors.

[397] Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861.

[398] Bachofen, speaking of the Cretan city of Lyktos, remarks that “this city was considered a Lacedaemonian colony, and as also related to the Athenians. It was in both cases only on the mother’s side, for only the mothers were Spartans; the Athenian relationship, however, goes back to those Athenian women whom the Pelasgian Tyrrhenians are said to have enticed away from the Brauron promontory.”—Das Mutterrecht, ch. 13, p. 31.

With descent in the male line the lineage of the women would have remained unnoticed; but with descent in the female line the colonists would have given their pedigrees through females only.

[399] Das Mutterecht, ch. 38, p. 73.

[400] Polybius, xii, extract the second, Hampton’s Trans., iii, 242.

[401]

ἀδελφὴν γὰρ ὁ πάππος οὑμὸς ἔγημεν οὐχ ὁμομητρίαν.—Demosthenes contra Ebulides, 20.

[402] Demosth., Eubul., 24: In his time the registration was in the Deme; but it would show who were the phrators, blood relatives, fellow demots and gennetes of the person registered; as Euxitheus says, λέγω φράτερσι, συγγενέσι, δημόταις, γεννήταις vide also Hermann’s Polit. Antiq. of Greece, §. 100.

[403] Prometheus, 853.

[404]

ἀλλ' αὺτογενεῖ φυξανορίᾳ,
γάμου Αἰγύπτου Παίδων ἀσεβῆ τ'
ὀνοταζόμεναι.
—Aeschylus, Supp., 9.

[405] Early History of Institutions, Holt’s ed., p. 7.

[406] Germania, c. ii.

[407] De Bell. Gall., vi, 22.

[408] Germania, cap. 7. The line of battle, this author remarks, is formed by wedges. Acies per cuneos componitur.—Ger., c. 6. Kohlrausch observes that “the confederates of one mark or hundred, and of one race or sept, fought united.”—History of Germany, Appletons’ ed., trans. by J. D. Haas, p. 28.

[409] De Bell. Gall., iv, 1. Germania, cap. 6.

[410] Dr. Freeman, who has studied this subject specially, remarks: “The lowest unit in the political system is that which still exists under various names, as the mark, the geminde, the commune, or the parish. This, as we have seen, is one of many forms of the gens or clan, that in which it is no longer a wandering or a mere predatory body, but when, on the other hand, it has not joined with others to form one component element of a city commonwealth. In this stage the gens takes the form of an agricultural body, holding its common lands—the germ of the ager publicus of Rome, and of the folkland of England. This is the markgenossenschaft, the village community of the West. This lowest political unit, this gathering of real or artificial kinsmen, is made up of families, each living under the rule, the murd of its own father, that patria potestas which survived at Rome to form so marked and lasting a feature of Roman law. As the union of families forms the gens, and as the gens in its territorial aspect forms the markgenossenschaft, so the union of several such village communities and their marks or common lands forms the next higher political union, the hundred, a name to be found in one shape or another in most lands into which the Teutonic race has spread itself.... Above the hundred comes the pagus, the gau, the Danish syssel, the English shire, that is, the tribe looked at as occupying a certain territory. And each of these divisions, greater and smaller, had its chiefs.... The hundred is made up of villages, marks, geminden, whatever we call the lowest unit; the shire, the gau, the pagus, is made up of hundreds.”—Comparative Politics, McMillan & Co.’s ed., p. 116.