“But tribe and tribesmen were so called from the coalescence into communities and nations so called, for each of the coalescing bodies was called a tribe.”[251]

It will be noticed that marriage out of the gens is here recognized as a custom, and that the wife was enrolled in the gens, rather than the phratry, of her husband. Dikæarchus, who was a pupil of Aristotle, lived at a time when the gens existed chiefly as a pedigree of individuals, its powers having been transferred to new political bodies. He derived the origin of the gens from primitive times; but his statement that the phratry originated in the matrimonial practices of the gentes, while true doubtless as to the practice, is but an opinion as to the origin of the organization. Intermarriages, with common religious rites, would cement the phratric union; but a more satisfactory foundation of the phratry may be found in the common lineage of the gentes of which it was composed. It must be remembered that the gentes have a history running back through the three sub-periods of barbarism into the previous period of savagery, antedating the existence even of the Aryan and Semitic families. The phratry has been shown to have appeared among the American aborigines in the Lower Status of barbarism; while the Greeks were familiar with so much only of their former history as pertained to the Upper Status of barbarism.

Mr. Grote does not attempt to define the functions of the phratry, except generally. They were doubtless of a religious character chiefly; but they probably manifested themselves, as among the Iroquois, at the burial of the dead, at public games, at religious festivals, at councils, and at the agoras of the people, where the grouping of chiefs and people would be by phratries rather than by gentes. It would also naturally show itself in the array of the military forces, of which a memorable example is given by Homer in the address of Nestor to Agamemnon.[252] “Separate the troops by tribes and by phratries, Agamemnon, so that phratry may support phratry, and tribes, tribes (κρῖν' ἄνδρας κατὰ φῦλα, κατὰ φρήτρας, Ἀγάμεμνον, ὡς φρήτρη φρήτρηφιν ἀρήγῃ, φῦλα δὲ φύλοις). If thou wilt thus act, and the Greeks obey, thou wilt then ascertain which of the commanders and which of the soldiers is a coward, and which of them may be brave, for they will fight their best.” The number from the same gens in a military force would be too small to be made a basis in the organization of an army; but the larger aggregations of the phratries and tribes would be sufficient. Two things may be inferred from the advice of Nestor: first, that the organization of armies by phratries and tribes had then ceased to be common; and secondly, that in ancient times it had been the usual plan of army organization, a knowledge of which had not then disappeared. We have seen that the Tlascalans and Aztecs, who were in the Middle Status of barbarism, organized and sent out their military bands by phratries which, in their condition, was probably the only method in which a military force could be organized. The ancient German tribes organized their armies for battle on a similar principle.[253] It is interesting to notice how closely shut in the tribes of mankind have been to the theory of their social system.

The obligation of blood revenge, which was turned at a later day into a duty of prosecuting the murderer before the legal tribunals, rested primarily upon the gens of the slain person; but it was also shared in by the phratry, and became a phratric obligation.[254] In the Eumenides of Aeschylus, the Erinnys, after speaking of the slaying of his mother by Orestes, put the question: “What lustral water of his phrators shall await him?”[255] which seems to imply that if the criminal escaped punishment final purification was performed by his phratry instead of his gens. Moreover, the extension of the obligation from the gens to the phratry implies a common lineage of all the gentes in a phratry.

Since the phratry was intermediate between the gens and the tribe, and not invested with governmental functions, it was less fundamental and less important than either of the others; but it was a common, natural and perhaps necessary stage of re-integration between the two. Could an intimate knowledge of the social life of the Greeks in that early period be recovered, the phenomena would centre probably in the phratric organization far more conspicuously than our scanty records lead us to infer. It probably possessed more power and influence than is usually ascribed to it as an organization. Among the Athenians it survived the overthrow of the gentes as the basis of a system, and retained, under the new political system, some control over the registration of citizens, the enrollment of marriages and the prosecution of the murderer of a phrator before the courts.

It is customary to speak of the four Athenian tribes as divided each into three phratries, and of each phratry as divided into thirty gentes; but this is merely for convenience in description. A people under gentile institutions do not divide themselves into symmetrical divisions and subdivisions. The natural process of their formation was the exact reverse of this method; the gentes fell into phratries, and ultimately into tribes, which reunited in a society or a people. Each was a natural growth. That the number of gentes in each Athenian phratry was thirty is a remarkable fact incapable of explanation by natural causes. A motive sufficiently powerful, such as a desire for a symmetrical organization of the phratries and tribes, might lead to a subdivision of gentes by consent until the number was raised to thirty in each of these phratries; and when the number in a tribe was in excess, by the consolidation of kindred gentes until the number was reduced to thirty. A more probable way would be by the admission of alien gentes into phratries needing an increase of number. Having a certain number of tribes, phratries and gentes by natural growth, the reduction of the last two to uniformity in the four tribes could thus have been secured. Once cast in this numerical scale of thirty gentes to a phratry and three phratries to a tribe, the proportion might easily have been maintained for centuries, except perhaps as to the number of gentes in each phratry.

The religious life of the Grecian tribes had its centre and source in the gentes and phratries. It must be supposed that in and through these organizations, was perfected that marvelous polytheistic system, with its hierarchy of gods, its symbols and forms of worship, which impressed so powerfully the mind of the classical world. In no small degree this mythology inspired the great achievements of the legendary and historical periods, and created that enthusiasm which produced the temple and ornamental architecture in which the modern world has taken so much delight. Some of the religious rites, which originated in these social aggregates, were nationalized from the superior sanctity they were supposed to possess; thus showing to what extent the gentes and phratries were nurseries of religion. The events of this extraordinary period, the most eventful in many respects in the history of the Aryan family, are lost, in the main, to history. Legendary genealogies and narratives, myths and fragments of poetry, concluding with the Homeric and Hesiodic poems, make up its literary remains. But their institutions, arts, inventions, mythological system, in a word the substance of civilization which they wrought out and brought with them, were the legacy they contributed to the new society they were destined to found. The history of the period may yet be reconstructed from these various sources of knowledge, reproducing the main features of gentile society as they appeared shortly before the institution of political society.

As the gens had its archon, who officiated as its priest in the religious observances of the gens, so each phratry had its phratriarch (φρατριάρχος), who presided at its meetings, and officiated in the solemnization of its religious rites. “The phratry,” observes M. De Coulanges, “had its assemblies and its tribunals, and could pass decrees. In it, as well as in the family, there was a god, a priesthood, a legal tribunal and a government.”[256] The religious rites of the phratries were an expansion of those of the gentes of which it was composed. It is in these directions that attention should be turned in order to understand the religious life of the Greeks.

Next in the ascending scale of organization was the tribe, consisting of a number of phratries, each composed of gentes. The persons in each phratry were of the same common lineage, and spoke the same dialect. Among the Athenians as before stated each tribe contained three phratries, which gave to each a similar organization. The tribe corresponds with the Latin tribe, and also with those of the American aborigines, an independent dialect for each tribe being necessary to render the analogy with the latter complete. The concentration of such Grecian tribes as had coalesced into a people, in a small area, tended to repress dialectical variation, which a subsequent written language and literature tended still further to arrest each tribe from antecedent habits, however, was more or less localized in a fixed area, through the requirements of a social system resting on personal relations. It seems probable that each tribe had its council of chiefs, supreme in all matters relating to the tribe exclusively. But since the functions and powers of the general council of chiefs, who administered the general affairs of the united tribes, were allowed to fall into obscurity, it would not be expected that those of an inferior and subordinate council would be preserved. If such a council existed, which was doubtless the fact from its necessity under their social system, it would have consisted of the chiefs of the gentes.

When the several phratries of a tribe united in the commemoration of their religious observances it was in their higher organic constitution as a tribe. As such, they were under the presidency, as we find it expressed, of a phylo-basileus, who was the principal chief of the tribe. Whether he acted as their commander in the military service I am unable to state. He possessed priestly functions, always inherent in the office of basileus, and exercised a criminal jurisdiction in cases of murder; whether to try or to prosecute a murderer, I am unable to state. The priestly and judicial functions attached to the office of basileus tend to explain the dignity it acquired in the legendary and heroic periods. But the absence of civil functions, in the strict sense of the term, of the presence of which we have no satisfactory evidence, is sufficient to render the term king, so constantly employed in history as the equivalent of basileus, a misnomer. Among the Athenians we have the tribe-basileus, where the term is used by the Greeks themselves as legitimately as when applied to the general military commander of the four united tribes. When each is described as a king it makes the solecism of four tribes each under a king separately, and the four tribes together under another king. There is a larger amount of fictitious royalty here than the occasion requires. Moreover, when we know that the institutions of the Athenians at the time were essentially democratical it becomes a caricature of Grecian society. It shows the propriety of returning to simple and original language, using the term basileus where the Greeks used it, and rejecting king as a false equivalent. Monarchy is incompatible with gentilism, for the reason that gentile institutions are essentially democratical. Every gens, phratry and tribe was a completely organized self-governing body; and where several tribes coalesced into a nation the resulting government would be constituted in harmony with the principles animating its constituent parts.