Although Greek society when it first came under our observation was under gentile organization, the gens had passed out of its archaic stage. This ancient institution, which had carried humanity through to civilization, was gradually losing its vitality; it had lost its efficiency as a governing agency, and was about to give place to political institutions.
With the facts at present accessible regarding peoples in the lower and middle stages of barbarism, the various steps in the growth of government as administered in the upper or latter stage of barbarism are clearly observed; also by close attention to the conditions surrounding extant peoples in the latter stage of barbarism and the opening ages of civilization, the processes involved in the transfer of society from gentile to political institutions are easily traced, together with the principal ideas and motives underlying the growth of all the institutions belonging to early historic nations.
Until civilization was reached the gens constituted the unit of organized society. This fact, however, until a comparatively recent time, seems to have been overlooked. Without attempting to explain the origin of the gens and phratry as they existed in Greece, Mr. Grote observes: “The legislator finds them pre-existing, and adapts or modifies them to answer some national scheme.” Unacquainted as this writer evidently was with the construction of primitive society, he failed to observe that originally, in Greece, all the powers of the legislator himself were derived from and circumscribed by the gens. Indeed, that this organization upon which the superstructure of Grecian society rested was the original source whence proceeded all social privileges and all military rights and obligations, is a condition which until a comparatively recent time has been overlooked. While discussing the relations of the family to the gens, the gens to the phratry, and the phratry to the tribe, Mr. Grote says: “The basis of the whole was the house, hearth, or family—a number of which, greater or less, composed the gens, or genos.”[147]
Mr. Morgan has shown, however, that the family could not have constituted the basis of the gens, for the reason that the heads of families belonged to separate gentes. We are assured that the gens is much older than the monogamic family, and therefore that the latter could not have formed the basis of the gentile organization; but even had the family preceded the gens in order of development, as its members belonged to different gentes it could not have constituted the unit of the social series.
In order to gain a clear understanding of the processes and principles involved in the early Grecian form of government, it first becomes necessary briefly to review the various steps in the growth of the governmental functions through two ethnical periods.
The tribe is a community of related individuals possessed of equal rights and privileges, and bound by equal duties and responsibilities. It has been shown that in the Lower Status of barbarism the government consisted of only one power—a council of chiefs elected by the people. During the Middle Status of barbarism two powers appear,—the civil and military functions have become separated, the duties of a military commander being co-ordinated with those of a council of chiefs. The military commander, however, has not succeeded in drawing to himself the powers of a ruler or king. In the Second Status of barbarism tribes have not begun to confederate. A single tribe, its members bound together by the tie of kinship and united by common rights and responsibilities, owning their lands in common, and each contributing his share toward the common defence, so long as it was able to maintain its independence, had little need for an elaborate form of government. As yet no strifes engendered by envy and extreme selfishness had arisen to disturb the simplicity of their lives, or to check the development of those early principles of liberty and fraternity which were the natural inheritance of the gens. A council of chiefs elected by the gentes and receiving all its powers from the people had thus far performed all the duties of government.
After the Upper Status of barbarism is reached we find confederated tribes dwelling together in walled cities surrounded by embankments, and a state of affairs existing which called for a further differentiation of the functions of government, and a redistribution of the powers and responsibilities of the people. In process of time, with the accumulation of property in masses in the hands of the few, and the consequent rise of an aristocracy, a government founded on wealth, or on a territorial basis, rather than on the personal relations of an individual to his gens, was demanded; and, finally, those principles, rights, and privileges which constitute a pure democracy, and which had always formed the basis of gentile institutions were gradually ignored; that personal influence which was originally exercised by each and every gentilis being transferred to a privileged class—a class which controlled the wealth, and at the head of which was the military commander or basileus. Such was the condition of Grecian society as it first appears in history.
A comparison instituted by Mr. Morgan between the Iroquois gens and that of the Greeks shows the former at the time when it first came under European observation to have been in the archaic stage, with descent and all the rights of succession traced in the female line; while the latter, at the time designated as the heroic age, had not only changed the manner of reckoning descent from the female to the male line, but was evidently about to give place to political society which, instead of being founded on kinship, was based on property and territory, or upon a man’s relations to the township or deme in which he resided.
While the Iroquois tribe of Indians represents the gens in its original vitality, the Greeks appear to have reached a stage at which the archaic form of government instituted on the basis of kin was found inadequate to meet their necessities; hence the confusion arising from disputed authority, at the almost interminable struggle between the various classes which had arisen, and the evident disaffection and unrest manifest among the entire Grecian people during the ages intervening between Codrus, nearly eleven hundred years B. C., and Clisthenes, five hundred years later.
That degree of jealousy with which individual liberty was guarded during the earlier ages of historic Greece, that thirst for freedom, and that restlessness under tyranny which characterized the Grecian people throughout their entire career, are explained by the fact that prior to the age of Clisthenes they were under gentile institutions, the fundamental principles of which were liberty, equality, and justice. From all the facts which may be gathered bearing upon this subject, it is evident that although at the beginning of the historic period the Greeks had lost much of that independence which belonged to an earlier stage of human development, their institutions still partook of the character of a democracy.