Ancient society

by Lewis Henry Morgan

This followed necessarily from the nature of the gens. All such persons as were born sons or daughters of a male member of the gens were themselves members, and of right entitled to bear the gentile name. In the lapse of time it was found impossible for the members of a gens to trace their descent back to the founder, and, consequently, for different families within the gens to find their connection through a later common ancestor. Whilst this inability proved the antiquity of the lineage, it was no evidence that these families had not sprung from a remote common ancestor. The fact that persons were born in the gens, and that each could trace his descent through a series of acknowledged members of the gens, was sufficient evidence of gentile descent, and strong evidence of the blood connection of all the gentiles. But some investigators, Niebuhr among the number,[316] have denied the existence of any blood relationship between the families in a gens, since they could not show a connection through a common ancestor. This treats the gens as a purely fictitious organization, and is therefore untenable. Niebuhr’s inference against a blood connection from Cicero’s definition is not sustainable. If the right of a person to bear the gentile name were questioned, proof of the right would consist, not in tracing his descent from the genarch, but from a number of acknowledged ancestors within the gens. Without written records the number of generations through which a pedigree might be traced would be limited. Few families in the same gens might not be able to find a common ancestor, but it would not follow that they were not of common descent from some remote ancestor within the gens.[317]

After descent was changed to the male line the ancient names of the gentes, which not unlikely were taken from animals,[318] or inanimate objects, gave place to personal names. Some individual, distinguished in the history of the gens, became its eponymous ancestor, and this person, as elsewhere suggested, was not unlikely superseded by another at long intervals of time. When a gens divided in consequence of separation in area, one division would be apt to take a new name; but such a change of name would not disturb the kinship upon which the gens was founded. When it is considered that the lineage of the Roman gentes, under changes of names, ascended to the time when the Latins, Greeks and the Sanskrit speaking people of India were one people, without reaching its source, some conception of its antiquity may be gained. The loss of the gentile name at any time by any individual was the most improbable of all occurrences; consequently its possession was the highest evidence that he shared with his gentiles the same ancient lineage. There was one way, and but one, of adulterating gentile descent, namely: by the adoption of strangers in blood into the gens. This practice prevailed, but the extent of it was small. If Neibuhr had claimed that the blood relationship of the gentiles had become attenuated by lapse of time to an inappreciable quantity between some of them, no objection could be taken to his position; but a denial of all relationship which turns the gens into a fictitious aggregation of persons, without any bond of union, controverts the principle upon which the gens came into existence, and which perpetuated it through three entire ethnical periods.

Elsewhere I have called attention to the fact that the gens came in with a system of consanguinity which reduced all consanguinei to a small number of categories, and retained their descendants indefinitely in the same. The relationships of persons were easily traced, no matter how remote their actual common ancestor. In an Iroquois gens of five hundred persons, all its members are related to each other and each person knows or can find his relationship to every other; so that the fact of kin was perpetually present in the gens of the archaic period. With the rise of the monogamian family, a new and totally different system of consanguinity came in, under which the relationships between collaterals soon disappeared. Such was the system of the Latin and Grecian tribes at the commencement of the historical period. That which preceded it was, presumptively at least, Turanian, under which the relationships of the gentiles to each other would have been known.

After the decadence of the gentile organization commenced, new gentes ceased to form by the old process of segmentation; and some of those existing died out. This tended to enhance the value of gentile descent as a lineage. In the times of the empire, new families were constantly establishing themselves in Rome from foreign parts, and assuming gentile names to gain social advantages. This practice being considered an abuse, the Emperor Claudius (A. D. 40-54), prohibited foreigners from assuming Roman names, especially those of the ancient gentes.[319] Roman families, belonging to the historical gentes, placed the highest value upon their lineages both under the republic and the empire.

All the members of a gens were free, and equal in their rights and privileges, the poorest as well as the richest, the distinguished as well as the obscure; and they shared equally in whatever dignity the gentile name conferred which they inherited as a birthright. Liberty, equality and fraternity were cardinal principles of the Roman gens, not less certainly than of the Grecian, and of the American Indian.

VIII. The right of adopting strangers in blood into the gens.

In the times of the republic, and also of the empire, adoption into the family, which carried the person into the gens of the family, was practiced; but it was attended with formalities which rendered it difficult. A person who had no children, and who was past the age to expect them, might adopt a son with the consent of the pontifices, and of the comitia curiata. The college of pontiffs were entitled to be consulted lest the sacred rites of the family, from which the adopted person was taken, might thereby be impaired;[320] as also the assembly, because the adopted person would receive the gentile name, and might inherit the estate of his adoptive father. From the precautions which remained in the time of Cicero, the inference is reasonable that under the previous system, which was purely gentile, the restrictions must have been greater and the instances rare. It is not probable that adoption in the early period was allowed without the consent of the gens, and of the curia to which the gens belonged; and if so, the number adopted must have been limited. Few details remain of the ancient usages with respect to adoption.

IX. The right of electing and deposing its chiefs; query.

The incompleteness of our knowledge of the Roman gentes is shown quite plainly by the absence of direct information with respect to the tenure of the office of chief (princeps). Before the institution of political society each gens had its chief, and probably more than one. When the office became vacant it was necessarily filled, either by the election of one of the gentiles, as among the Iroquois, or taken by hereditary right. But the absence of any proof of hereditary right, and the presence of the elective principle with respect to nearly all offices under the republic, and before that, under the reges, leads to the inference that hereditary right was alien to the institutions of the Latin tribes. The highest office, that of rex, was elective, the office of senator was elective or by appointment, and that of consuls and of inferior magistrates. It varied with respect to the college of pontiffs instituted by Numa. At first the pontiffs themselves filled vacancies by election. Livy speaks of the election of a pontifex maximus by the comitia about 212 B. C.[321] By the lex Domitia the right to elect the members of the several colleges of pontiffs and of priests was transferred to the people, but the law was subsequently modified by Sulla.[322]