A brief reference to the added characteristics should be made.
7. The limitation of descent to the male line. There is no doubt that such was the rule, because it is proved by their genealogies. I have not been able to find in any Greek author a definition of a gens or of a gentilis that would furnish a sufficient test of the right of a given person to the gentile connection. Cicero, Varro and Festus have defined the Roman gens and gentilis, which were strictly analogous to the Grecian, with sufficient fullness to show that descent was in the male line. From the nature of the gens, descent was either in the female line or the male, and included but a moiety of the descendants of the founder. It is precisely like the family among ourselves. Those who are descended from the males bear the family name, and they constitute a gens in the full sense of the term, but in a state of dispersion, and without any bond of union excepting those nearest in degree. The females lose, with their marriage, the family name, and with their children are transferred to another family. Grote remarks that Aristotle was the “son of the physician Nikomachus who belonged to the gens of the Asklepiads.”[239] Whether Aristotle was of the gens of his father depends upon the further question whether they both derived their descent from Aesculapius, through males exclusively. This is shown by Laertius, who states that “Aristotle was the son of Nikomachus ... and Nikomachus was descended from Nikomachus the son of Machaon, the son of Aesculapius.”[240] Although the higher members of the series may be fabulous, the manner of tracing the descent would show the gens of the person. The statement of Hermann, on the authority of Isaeus, is also to the point. “Every infant was registered in the phratria and clan (γένος) of its father.”[241] Registration in the gens of the father implies that his children were of his gens.
8. The obligation not to marry in the gens excepting in specified cases. This obligation may be deduced from the consequences of marriage. The wife by her marriage lost the religious rites of her gens, and acquired those of her husband’s gens. The rule is stated as so general as to imply that marriage was usually out of the gens. “The virgin who quits her father’s house,” Wachsmuth remarks, “is no longer a sharer of the paternal sacrificial hearth, but enters the religious communion of her husband, and this gave sanctity to the marriage tie.”[242] The fact of her registration is stated by Hermann as follows: “Every newly married woman, herself a citizen, was on this account enrolled in the phratry of her husband.”[243] Special religious rites (sacra gentilicia) were common in the Grecian and Latin gens. Whether the wife forfeited her agnatic rights by her marriage, as among the Romans, I am unable to state. It is not probable that marriage severed all connection with her gens, and the wife doubtless still counted herself of the gens of her father.
The prohibition of intermarriage in the gens was fundamental in the archaic period; and it undoubtedly remained after descent was changed to the male line, with the exception of heiresses and female orphans for whose case special provision was made. Although a tendency to free marriage, beyond certain degrees of consanguinity, would follow the complete establishment of the monogamian family, the rule requiring persons to marry out of their own gens would be apt to remain so long as the gens was the basis of the social system. The special provision in respect to heiresses tends to confirm this supposition. Becker remarks upon this question, that “relationship was, with trifling limitations, no hinderance to marriage, which could take place within all degrees of [ἀγχιστεία Greek: agchisteia], or συγγένεια, though naturally not in the [γένος Greek: genos] itself.”[244]
9. The right to adopt strangers into the gens. This right was practiced at a later day, at least in families; but it was done with public formalities, and was doubtless limited to special cases.[245] Purity of lineage became a matter of high concern in the Attic gentes, interposing no doubt serious obstacles to the use of the right except for weighty reasons.
10. The right to elect and depose its chiefs. This right undoubtedly existed in the Grecian gentes in the early period. Presumptively it was possessed by them while in the Upper Status of barbarism. Each gens had its archon (ἀρχὸς), which was the common name for a chief. Whether the office was elective, for example, in the Homeric period, or was transmitted by hereditary right to the eldest son, is a question. The latter was not the ancient theory of the office; and a change so great and radical, affecting the independence and personal rights of all the members of the gens, requires positive proof to override the presumption against it. Hereditary right to an office, carrying with it authority over, and obligations from, the members of a gens is a very different thing from an office bestowed by a free election, with the reserved power to depose for unworthy behavior. The free spirit of the Athenian gentes down to the time of Solon and Cleisthenes forbids the supposition, as to them, that they had parted with a right so vital to the independence of the members of the gens. I have not been able to find any satisfactory explanation of the tenure of this office. Hereditary succession, if it existed, would indicate a remarkable development of the aristocratical element in ancient society, in derogation of the democratical constitution of the gentes. Moreover, it would be a sign of the commencement, at least, of their decadence. All the members of a gens were free and equal, the rich and the poor enjoying equal rights and privileges, and acknowledging the same in each other. We find liberty, equality and fraternity, written as plainly in the constitution of the Athenian gentes as in those of the Iroquois. Hereditary right to the principal office of the gens is totally inconsistent with the older doctrine of equal rights and privileges.
Whether the higher offices of anax, koiranos, and basileus were transmitted by hereditary right from father to son, or were elective or confirmative by a larger constituency, is also a question. It will be considered elsewhere. The former would indicate the subversion, as the latter the conservation, of gentile institutions. Without decisive evidence to the contrary every presumption is adverse to hereditary right. Some additional light will be gained on this subject when the Roman gentes are considered. A careful re-investigation of the tenure of this office would, not unlikely, modify essentially the received accounts.
It may be considered substantially assured that the Grecian gentes possessed the ten principal attributes named. All save three, namely, descent in the male line, marrying into the gens in the case of heiresses, and the possible transmission of the highest military office by hereditary right, are found with slight variations in the gentes of the Iroquois. It is thus rendered apparent that in the gentes, both the Grecian and the Iroquois tribes possessed the same original institution, the one having the gens in its later, and the other in its archaic form.
Recurring now to the quotation from Mr. Grote, it may be remarked that had he been familiar with the archaic form of the gens, and with the several forms of the family anterior to the monogamian, he would probably have modified essentially some portion of his statement. An exception must be taken to his position that the basis of the social system of the Greeks “was the house, hearth, or family.” The form of the family in the mind of the distinguished historian was evidently the Roman, under the iron-clad rule of a pater familias, to which the Grecian family of the Homeric period approximated in the complete domination of the father over the household. It would have been equally untenable had other and anterior forms of the family been intended. The gens, in its origin, is older than the monogamian family, older than the syndyasmian, and substantially contemporaneous with the punaluan. In no sense was it founded upon either. It does not recognize the existence of the family of any form as a constituent of itself. On the contrary, every family in the archaic as well as in the later period, was partly within and partly without the gens, because husband and wife must belong to different gentes. The explanation is both simple and complete; namely, that the family springs up independently of the gens with entire freedom to advance from a lower into a higher form, while the gens is constant, as well as the unit of the social system. The gens entered entire into the phratry, the phratry entered entire into the tribe, and the tribe entered entire into the nation; but the family could not enter entire into the gens because husband and wife must belong to different gentes.