The same word γένος is used to designate both the circle of nameable relatives, brothers, first cousins (ἀγχιστεῖς, Demosth. cont. Makartat. c. 9, p. 1058), etc., going beyond the οἶκος,—and the quasi-family, or gens. As the gentile tie tended to become weaker, so the former sense of the word became more and more current, to the extinction of the latter. Οἱ ἐν γένει, or οἱ προσήκοντες, would have borne a wider sense in the days of Drako than in those of Demosthenes: Συγγενὴς usually belongs to γένος in the narrower sense, γεννήτης to γένος in the wider sense; but Isæus sometimes uses the former word as an exact equivalent of the latter (Orat. vii, pp. 95, 99, 102, 103, Bekker). Τριακὰς appears to be noted in Pollux as the equivalent of γένος, or gens (viii, 111), but the word does not occur in the Attic orators, and we cannot make out its meaning with certainty: the Inscription of the Deme of Peiræeus given in Boeckh (Corp. Insc. No. 101, p. 140,) rather adds to the confusion by revealing the existence of a τριακὰς constituting the fractional part of a deme, and not connected with a gens: compare Boeckh’s Comment. ad loc. and his Addenda and Corrigenda, p. 900.
Dr. Thirlwall translates γένος, house; which I cannot but think inconvenient, because that word is the natural equivalent of οἶκος,—a very important word in reference to Attic feelings, and quite different from γένος (Hist. of Greece, vol. ii, p. 14, ch. 11). It will be found impossible to translate it by any known English word which does not at the same time suggest erroneous ideas: which I trust will be accepted as my excuse for adopting it untranslated into this History.
[103] Demosthen. cont. Makartat l. c.
[104] See Æschines de Falsâ Legat. p. 292, c. 46; Lysias cont. Andokid. p. 108; Andokid. de Mysteriis, p. 63, Reiske; Deinarchus and Hellanikus ap. Harpokration. v. Ἱεροφάντης.
In case of crimes of impiety, particularly in offences against the sanctity of the Mysteries, the Eumolpidæ had a peculiar tribunal of their own number, before which offenders were brought by the king archon. Whether it was often used, seems doubtful; they had also certain unwritten customs of great antiquity, according to which they pronounced (Demosthen. cont. Androtion. p. 601; Schol. ad Demosth. vol. ii, p. 137, Reiske: compare Meier and Schömann, Der Attische Prozess, p. 117). The Butadæ, also, had certain old unwritten maxims (Androtion ap. Athenæ. ix, p. 374).
Compare Bossler, De Gentibus et Familiis Atticæ, p. 20, and Ostermann, De Præconibus Græcor. sect. 2 and 3 (Marburg, 1845).
[105] Lykurgus the orator is described as τὸν δῆμον Βουτάδης, γένους τοῦ τῶν Ἐτεοβουταδῶν (Plutarch, Vit. x. Orator. p. 841).
[106] In an inscription (apud Boeckh. Corpus Inscrip. No. 465).
Four names of the phratries at the Greek city of Neapolis, and six names out of the thirty Roman curiæ, have been preserved (Becker, Handbuch der Römischen Alterthümer, p. 32; Boeckh, Corp. Inscript. ii, p. 650).
Each Attic phratry seems to have had its own separate laws and customs, distinct from the rest, τοῖς φράτορσι, κατὰ τοὺς ἐκείνων νόμους (Isæus, Or. viii, p. 115, ed. Bek.; vii, p. 99; iii, p. 49).