I have already indicated my inclination to believe that Totemism has left its traces, in Greece, in the myths of descent from bulls, bears, swans, dogs, ants, and so forth, and in certain peculiar aspects of animal worship. It is usual for scholars to explain these facts away, as things borrowed by early Greeks from some other race. But 'the receiver is as bad as the thief,' and if Greeks were capable of accepting totemic ideas, they were capable of evolving totemic institutions. We are not to invent an ideal 'Aryan,' and then to explain all his traces of savagery as borrowings by him from some unknown prior race. There is no reason at all for supposing that the peoples who speak languages called, for convenience, 'Aryan,' were better bred than any other peoples at the beginning.
It would greatly add to the force of the presumptions in favour of an 'Aryan' totemic past, if we could point to apparent survivals not only in myth and early art, but in actual institutions. Now there are Greek institutions, in Attica, the 'deme,' the genos, and the phratria, which may be interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as survivals of Totemism. We have seen that gens (equivalent to the Greek γένος) and that phratria (Φρατρία) are used, by certain students, to designate the totem kin, and the two 'primary exogamous divisions' (say Dilbi and Kupathin) of Australia and North America. To use gens thus is misleading, especially as 'totem kin' is adequate and unambiguous. But we have here employed 'phratria' to designate the 'primary exogamous division,' because no better word is handy, while we do not maintain that the Attic phratria is a survival of the institution usual in Australia.
Messrs. Fison and Howitt, in an instructive paper, have offered, as a provisional hypothesis, the theory that the Attic deme (a local association) may have arisen from the kind of local tribe (or horde) in Australia, while the Attic phratries and γένη (associations depending on birth and kinship) were survivals of the 'primary exogamous divisions' and totem kins.[32] The present writer had made similar suggestions long ago.[33] Concerning the γένος and Φρατρία we know but little: inevitably, for we have seen that, even in Australia, still more in Melanesia, local names and local communities are beginning to encroach on and usurp the authority of the totem kin, and other associations based on common blood, real or reputed. Infinitely more must this have been the case in Greece. If savage phratries and totem kins once existed in Attica, they must have been nearly obliterated long before the historical period. At most they would only survive in connection with ritual and religion. Again, our definitions of γένος and Φρατρία are derived from late grammarians and lexicographers. Thus our means of knowledge are limited and darkling.
Messrs. Howitt and Fison start from the horde, or tribe, the horde meaning the largest local Australian community, composed of subtribes, if we are not merely to say 'tribe,' and leave 'horde' out of the question. The members of the horde or tribe are, as we know, of many various totems, but of only two 'primary exogamous divisions' or phratries. Into these the members are born, mostly taking the mother's phratry and totem. As a rule, both father and mother belong to the tribe, but if a woman does come in out of an alien tribe, her children, though deriving totem and phratry names through her, are of their father's local tribe. An alien woman may be assigned, by the elder men, to this or that totem: or to the totem corresponding to that which she had in her own local tribe. The children of male aliens follow the totem of their mother, a member of the tribe.
In Attica, too, was a local community, the deme—thus Thucydides was a Halimusian by deme. The historical demes were organised by Cleisthenes, on a local basis. Some of them bore the names of the γένη which occupied them, and often the names were derived from plants. Either these plants were characteristic of the localities, or conceivably the γένη had old totemic plant names, like the plum and other vegetable totems of the Australians. All about the local demes, the members of the phratriæ were scattered, like members of various totem names among the Australian local tribes. An alien could belong to a local deme, but not to a Φρατρία. His children, if by marriage with a free woman, were reckoned in her father's Φρατρία male descent prevailing, of course, in Attica. In Australia the tribes-woman's children by an alien would usually go to her totem and 'primary exogamous division.' The child of an alien woman, in Attica, even if the father was high born, could not be admitted to a Φρατρία: which certainly looks like a survival of the archaic reckoning by female descent. To try to insert an alien child in a deme was a civil, in a Φρατρία was a religious offence.[34] The ancient court of the Areopagus had to do with these offences against customary religion. Messrs. Fison and Howitt draw a parallel between the Areopagus and the Great Council of the Dieri tribe, whose headman was inspired by 'the great spirit Kuchi,' of whom one would like to know more.
An Attic boy was presented to his Φρατρία at once; full membership of the local deme came with adolescence, and after military training and service. As we know, a series of initiations, and instruction 'as to the existence of a great spirit,' with a probation of a year, are to be passed before the Australian lad is allowed to marry and attend the assembly of his local tribe. Better examples of initiation, and of a retreat in the hills in company with an adult, and instructor, are to be found in Sparta than in Athens. But the Australian 'and Attic analogies are pretty close. On the most important point there is no analogy. There were plenty of Φρατρίαι, of 'phratries' each Australian tribe has only two. Again, these two are exogamous: that is their main raison d'être. We have not a glimpse of exogamy in the Φρατρία of Attica.
The γένος, we may agree, I think, with Messrs. Fison and Howitt, was, originally, like the totem kin, an association of persons supposed to be related by ties of blood. The grammarian Pollux says 'they who belonged to the γένος were styled γεννῆται' (men of the γένος, and 'men of the same milk'), 'not that they were related γένει, but they were so called from their union (or assemblage—ἐκ δὲ τῆς συνόδον).' What is meant by γένει μὲν οὐ προσήκοντες 'not genealogically related'? I conceive Pollux to mean that the members of the γένος were not all of traceable or recognised degrees of kinship. Thus a Cameron, if asked whether he is related to another Cameron, may say, and not so long ago would have said, 'he is not my relation, but my clansman.' Messrs. Fison and Howitt take much the same view. By 'relations,' Pollux meant 'such as parents, sons, brothers, and those before them, and their progeny,' that is, from grandfathers and granduncles to grandsons and great-nephews. This might be the notion of relationship in the time of Pollux, the second century of our era, but, as Messrs. Fison and Howitt justly remark, Attic ideas of kinship before the συνοικισμὸς ascribed to Theseus would be much more extensive, as in Scotland and Britanny. The humblest Stewart, Douglas, Ruthven, or Hamilton would call himself 'the King's poor cousin.' But the Greeks of our second century were more modern, more like the English.
Yet the very words γένος and gens indicate the idea of blood relationship, just as 'clan' does. The γένη had common sacra, and a common place of burial. They were clans, but we have no proof that they were ever exogamous or totemic. However, the myths and rituals of Greece certainly yield facts of which a totemic past seems the most plausible explanation. Mr. Jevons writes, 'we find fragments of the system' (Totemism), 'one here and another there, which, if only they had not been scattered, but had been found together, would have made a living whole. Thus we have families whose names indicate that they were originally totem clans, e.g. there were Cynadæ at Athens, as there was a Dog clan among the Mohicans; but we have no evidence to show that the dog was sacred to the Cynadæ.... On the other hand, storks were revered by the Thessalians, but there is nothing to show that there was a stork clan in Thessaly.'[35] Wolves were buried solemnly in Attica, where there was a wolf hero, and lobsters were buried in Seriphos, like the gazelle in Arabia. But we have no evidence of a wolf kin in Attica, though we have in Italy (the Hirpi) nor of a lobster kin in Seriphos. (For other traces, fairly numerous, I may refer to my Custom and Myth, and Myth, Ritual, and Religion, while deprecating the idea that all worship or reverence of animals is of totemistic origin.)
It will probably be admitted that, if Greeks (or ancient dwellers on Greek soil) were at some remote period totemistic, and next, by reckoning descent in the male line, became attached to localities, then something like demes, phratries, and γένη might very naturally be evolved. And many traces in ritual, myth, and custom do point to Totemism in the remote past. Indeed, it is remarkable that we should still be able to point to so many apparent relics of institutions already almost obliterated among the Melanesians.