Mr. Mill notices the same state of feeling among the Hindoos.—(History of British India, book ii, chap. vii. p. 381, ed. 8vo.)
[89] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 5, 8; Herodot. i, 147; Suidas, Ἀπατουρία—Ζεὺς Φράτριος—Ἀθηναία φρατρία, the presiding god of the phratric union.—Plato, Euthydem. c. 28, p. 302; Demosth. adv. Makart. p. 1054. See Meier, De Gentilitate Atticâ, pp. 11-14.
The πάτριαι at Byzantium, which were different from θίασοι, and which possessed corporate property (τά τε θιασωτικὰ καὶ τὰ πατριωτικὰ, Aristot. Œconomic. ii, 4), are doubtless the parallel of the Athenian phratries.
[90] Dikæarchus ap. Stephan. Byz. v. Πατρὰ; Aristot. Polit. i, 1, 6: Ὁμοσιπύος and ὁμοκάπνους are the old words cited by the latter from Charondas and Epimenidês.
[91] Niebuhr, Römische Geschichte, vol. i, pp. 317-337. Varro’s language on that point is clear: “Ut in hominibus quædam sunt cognationes et gentilitates, sic in verbis. Ut enim ab Æmilio homines orti Æmilii et gentiles, sic ab Æmilii nomine declinatæ voces in gentilitate nominali.” Paul. Diacon. p. 94. “Gentilis dicitur ex eodem genere ortus, et is qui simili nomine appellatur,” etc. See Becker, Handbuch der Römischen Alterthümer, part 2, abth. 2, p. 36.
The last part of the definition ought to be struck out for the Grecian gentes. The passage of Varro does not prove the historical reality of the primitive father, or genarch, Æmilius, but it proves that the members of the gens believed in him.
Dr. Wilda, in his learned work, “Das Deutsche Strafrecht,” (Halle, 1842,) dissents from Niebuhr in the opposite direction, and seems to maintain that the Grecian and Roman gentes were really distant blood relations (p. 123). How this can be proved, I do not know: and it is inconsistent with the opinion which he advances in the preceding page (p. 122), very justly,—that these quasi families are primordial facts in early human society, beyond which we cannot carry our researches. “The farther we go back in history, the more does the community exhibit the form of a family, though in reality it is not a mere family. This is the limit of historical research, which no man can transgress with impunity,” (p. 122).
[92] Diogen. Laërt. v, 1.
[93] See Colonel Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, ch. 2, p. 85 (the Greek word φράτριαι seems to be adopted in Albania); Boué, La Turquie en Europe, vol. ii, ch. 1, pp. 15-17; chap. 4, p. 530; Spenser’s View of the State of Ireland (vol. vi, pp. 1542-1543, of Tonson’s edition of Spenser’s Works, 1715); Cyprien Robert, Die Slaven in Turkey, b. 1, chs. 1 and 2.
So, too, in the laws of king Alfred in England, on the subject of murder, the guild-brethren, or members of the same guild, are made to rank in the position of distant relatives, if there happen to be no blood relatives:—