§ 4. Qualifications For The Recognition Of Tribal Blood.
Purity of tribal blood jealously guarded.
It has been remarked above with what jealousy the purity of the blood of the community was guarded. No child was admitted into the kindred of its father until all concerned were fully convinced of the blamelessness of its pedigree. In such circumstances it was no easy matter to acquire the privileges attached to the possession of tribal or citizen blood. It seems to have been considered that however great otherwise the claims of a stranger might be, time alone could really render the qualifications of his family complete.
In Wales, privileges attained in the fourth generation by intermarriages.
Under the ancient Laws of Wales no stranger's family could acquire the full privileges of a Welsh tribesman or Cymro, as regards location on land, until after many generations. But if they married Welshwomen, and held land from generation to generation, [pg 068] the greatgrandsons became fully privileged tribesmen.[158] Similarly if a stranger voluntarily assumed the position of serf to a Welshman, and his descendants did not choose to depart, but remained in that position to the descendants of the Welshman, the greatgrandsons of the Welshman became proprietors of the greatgrandsons of the stranger.[159]
Otherwise not until the tenth generation.
But for the stranger who merely resided in Wales and did not marry into any Welsh tribe the period of probation was three times as long—viz., the greatgrandson of the greatgrandson of his greatgrandson was the first to attain to full tribal privilege—
“Strangers and their progeny are adjudged to be aillts; also a reputed son who shall be denied and his progeny, and evildoers of federate country and their progeny, unto the end of the ninth descent.”[160]
i.e., the tenth man would no longer be reckoned an aillt but a free Cymro.
The issue of a stranger obtains the privilege of a tribesman in the fourth person by legitimate marriages.[161] But the aillt or stranger, who dwells in Cymru, does not attain until the end of the ninth descent.
So too inversely:—
The title to inherit by kin and descent in the tribal land and rights of his ancestors does not become extinct till the ninth man. The ninth man in descent from a banished tribesman coming home and finding his title as representative of his family seemingly [pg 069] extinguished, is to raise an outcry that from a proprietor he is becoming a nonproprietor, and the law will shelter him and adjudge him an equal share with the occupants he finds on the land. This is called the “outcry across the abyss.” The tenth man's outcry cannot be heard. “Others say” that the ninth man is too late to raise the cry.[162]
This is exactly parallel to the case of the stranger resident in Cymru. For nine generations he is a stranger, and in the tenth a Cymro. Here for nine generations is the Cymro abroad a tribesman, and in the tenth he is a stranger.
The same rule amongst the Israelites.
From a passage in Deuteronomy it would appear that the qualifications for admission as a full tribesman amongst the Israelites were identical with those just mentioned.
The Israelites had purified themselves of the ancestor worship, that so long survived in Greece, and had, if one may say so, amalgamated all their minor deities and tribal superstitions in their one great monotheistic religion. Even then their tribal minds could not carry back their theology behind the known history of their own ancestors. Their God was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and was in their conception the greatest of Gods—i.e., greater than the Gods of other peoples, the existence of which their own beliefs did not preclude. Thus where in Attic writers we have mention of the religious rites of the family (which a stranger or polluted man might not [pg 070] approach), and of the partaking therein as proof of the whole admission and pure blood of those present, so in Deuteronomy the expression “the Congregation of the Lord,” is used to denote that sacred precinct, forbidden to all save pure tribesmen of Israel.
It may be inferred from the following passage that if a stranger resided in Israel, and his family continued to do so for nine generations, the tenth generation would in any ordinary case be admitted to the Congregation of the Lord as full Israelites.
Deut. xxiii. 2 and 3. “A bastard, or an Ammonite, or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord even to their tenth generation, for ever.”
Shorter time in special cases.
In special cases (exactly as was the rule in Wales)—such as the Edomite who was partly akin already, and the Egyptian who was united to the Israelites by the mysterious bonds of hospitality—a shorter sojourn in the land was held to qualify for full tribal privilege.
Deut. xxiii. 7 and 8. “Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is thy brother: thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, because thou wast a stranger in his land. The children that are begotten of them shall enter into the congregation of the Lord in their third generation.”
The third generation of children would be the greatgrandchildren of the original settler, and this is just one third of the length of time implied as required from the ordinary stranger, who only attained the tribal privilege in the third succession of greatgrandchildren.
It is worth notice in this connection that the land of Canaan was divided up in the names of the greatgrandchildren of Abraham, to whom the promise was [pg 071] made; Ephraim and Manasseh, the sons of Joseph, taking their place amongst the others by adoption as sons by their grandfather Jacob, on an equality with his other sons.[163]
The privilege of citizenship jealously guarded at Athens.
These rules are not to be found with the same distinctness surviving at Athens, but there is a good deal of evidence showing how jealously the introduction of strangers to citizenship—which retained much that made it the later equivalent of the tribal bond—was regarded.
Strangers made citizens (formally, ceremoniously, and by public vote) by the Athenian people cannot hold office as archon or partake of a holy office (ἱεροσύνη); but their children can, if they are born from a citizen wife duly and lawfully betrothed.[164] That is to say, that the Athenians considered it necessary that there should be actually citizen blood in the veins of all who held office amongst them.[165]
Abhorrence of alien blood.
The abhorrence in which the introduction of alien blood was held is illustrated by the Athenian law concerning marriage with aliens, quoted by Demosthenes in his speech against Neaera.
Law: “If an alien shall live as husband with an Athenian woman by any device or contrivance whatever, it shall be lawful for any of the Athenians who are possessed of such right, to indict him before the judges. And if he is convicted, he shall be sold for a slave and his property confiscated, and the third part shall belong [pg 072] to the person who has convicted him. And the like proceedings shall be taken if an alien woman live as wife with an Athenian citizen, and the citizen who lives as husband with an alien woman so convicted shall incur the penalty of 1,000 drachmæ.”
Citizenship only conferred as the highest honour.
Citizenship was considered the highest of privileges, and was conferred only on persons worthy of great honour. Any citizen could bring an action against the newly-admitted stranger to test his real merits, and even after formal acceptance by the people of Athens, if he failed to justify his claims at such a trial, his new honours were stripped from him and he remained an alien. This being so, it cannot be expected in the comparison that he should rank with the ordinary resident in Cymru in the Welsh Laws, but rather as the chieftain whom the people wished to honour by admission to their tribe.
It is stated in the Welsh Laws that the son of a stranger chief, to whom honour was to be given, entered the whole privilege of the tribe.
Qualification dependent on ancestry and status of family.
According to Aristotle,[166] candidates for archonship at Athens were asked their father's name and his deme, their grandfather's name and his deme, their mother's and her father's name and his deme;[167] whether the candidate had an Apollo Patroïos and Zeus Herkeios, and where these shrines were: also if he treated his parents well and paid his taxes.
In order to be perfectly sure that the candidate was of full and pure blood, they investigated the condition of both his grandparents, and, as further proof, [pg 073] assured themselves that he had a house and property of his own, and that too inherited from his ancestors. Furthermore, he must be guilty of no impiety towards his parents or the State.
If it were the case at Athens that the fourth generation from a stranger was considered as having attained to the rights of a citizen, it mattered little what a man's greatgrandfather was. He might have been an alien, yet if the intermediate ancestors were “in order,” the candidate would have acquired the full blood.[168]
Fourth generation acquired new privilege or status.
In the Oedipus Tyrannus,[169] Sophocles apparently uses the expression “slave from the third mother” as implying that three descents were considered to confirm the position of the fourth generation as slave or citizen, or whatever the case might be. Oedipus assures Jokasta that her pedigree and status will remain unimpugned, even though the enquiry he is prosecuting establish him thrice-born a slave from slave mother, slave grandmother, and slave greatgrandmother.
In elections for sacred offices, which appear to have been about the last things laid open to the new citizen, the possession of three generations of privileged ancestors was in some places insisted on. There is an inscription to this effect belonging to [pg 074] Halikarnassos;[170] and some similar rule seems to have held good among the Jews.
“These sought their register among those that were reckoned by genealogy, but it was not found; therefore were they, as polluted, put from the priesthood (ἠγχιστεύθησαν ἀπὸ τῆς ἱερατείας).”[171]
The book of Nehemiah closes with the triumphant verse: “Thus I cleansed them from all strangers.”
Seventh generation in the Ordinances of Manu.
The rule in the Ordinances of Manu for the recovery of Brahman caste is just halfway between the tenth and the fourth generations—namely, the seventh, or greatgrandson of the greatgrandson of the first halfcaste. This is only the case when each generation marries a Brahman wife.
“If (the caste) produced from a Brahman by a Çudra woman keeps reproducing itself by nobler (marriage) this ignoble attains a noble family at the seventh union (Yuga).”[172]
Thus:—
If (1) the halfcaste marries a Brahman woman and
(2) his son do.
(3) his grandson do.
(4) his greatgrandson do.
(5) his son do.
(6) his grandson do.
(7) his greatgrandson do.—at last his family is restored to their lost high caste.