γάμου Αἰγύπτου Παίδων ἀσεβῆ τ'
ὀνοταζόμεναι.
—Aeschylus, Supp., 9.
[405] Early History of Institutions, Holt’s ed., p. 7.
[406] Germania, c. ii.
[407] De Bell. Gall., vi, 22.
[408] Germania, cap. 7. The line of battle, this author remarks, is formed by wedges. Acies per cuneos componitur.—Ger., c. 6. Kohlrausch observes that “the confederates of one mark or hundred, and of one race or sept, fought united.”—History of Germany, Appletons’ ed., trans. by J. D. Haas, p. 28.
[409] De Bell. Gall., iv, 1. Germania, cap. 6.
[410] Dr. Freeman, who has studied this subject specially, remarks: “The lowest unit in the political system is that which still exists under various names, as the mark, the geminde, the commune, or the parish. This, as we have seen, is one of many forms of the gens or clan, that in which it is no longer a wandering or a mere predatory body, but when, on the other hand, it has not joined with others to form one component element of a city commonwealth. In this stage the gens takes the form of an agricultural body, holding its common lands—the germ of the ager publicus of Rome, and of the folkland of England. This is the markgenossenschaft, the village community of the West. This lowest political unit, this gathering of real or artificial kinsmen, is made up of families, each living under the rule, the murd of its own father, that patria potestas which survived at Rome to form so marked and lasting a feature of Roman law. As the union of families forms the gens, and as the gens in its territorial aspect forms the markgenossenschaft, so the union of several such village communities and their marks or common lands forms the next higher political union, the hundred, a name to be found in one shape or another in most lands into which the Teutonic race has spread itself.... Above the hundred comes the pagus, the gau, the Danish syssel, the English shire, that is, the tribe looked at as occupying a certain territory. And each of these divisions, greater and smaller, had its chiefs.... The hundred is made up of villages, marks, geminden, whatever we call the lowest unit; the shire, the gau, the pagus, is made up of hundreds.”—Comparative Politics, McMillan & Co.’s ed., p. 116.
[411] Descriptive Ethnology, i, 80.