Ancient society

by Lewis Henry Morgan

It will be found that two governmental organizations were in existence for a time, side by side, as among the Athenians, one going out and the other coming in. The first was a society (societas), founded upon the gentes; and the other a state (civitas), founded upon territory and upon property, which was gradually supplanting the former. A government in a transitional stage is necessarily complicated, and therefore difficult to be understood. These changes were not violent but gradual, commencing with Romulus and substantially completed, though not perfected, by Servius Tullius; thus embracing a supposed period of nearly two hundred years, crowded with events of great moment to the infant commonwealth. In order to follow the history of the gentes to the overthrow of their influence in the state it will be necessary, after considering the curia, tribe and nation, to explain briefly the new political system. The last will form the subject of the ensuing chapter.

Gentile society among the Romans exhibits four stages of organization: first, the gens, which was a body of consanguinei and the unit of the social system; second, the curia, analogous to the Grecian phratry, which consisted of ten gentes united in a higher corporate body; third, the tribe, consisting of ten curiæ, which possessed some of the attributes of a nation under gentile institutions; and fourth, the Roman people (Populus Romanus), consisting, in the time of Tullus Hostilius, of three such tribes united by coalescence in one gentile society, embracing three hundred gentes. There are facts warranting the conclusion that all the Italian tribes were similarly organized at the commencement of the historical period; but with this difference, perhaps, that the Roman curia was a more advanced organization than the Grecian phratry, or the corresponding phratry of the remaining Italian tribes; and that the Roman tribe, by constrained enlargement, became a more comprehensive organization than in the remaining Italian stocks. Some evidence in support of these statements will appear in the sequel.

Before the time of Romulus the Italians, in their various branches, had become a numerous people. The large number of petty tribes, into which they had become subdivided, reveals that state of unavoidable disintegration which accompanies gentile institutions. But the federal principle had asserted itself among the other Italian tribes as well as the Latin, although it did not result in any confederacy that achieved important results. Whilst this state of things existed, that great movement ascribed to Romulus occurred, namely: the concentration of a hundred Latin gentes on the banks of the Tiber, which was followed by a like gathering of Sabine, Latin and Etruscan and other gentes, to the additional number of two hundred, ending in their final coalescence into one people. The foundations of Rome were thus laid, and Roman power and civilization were to follow. It was this consolidation of gentes and tribes under one government, commenced by Romulus and completed by his successors, that prepared the way for the new political system—for the transition from a government based upon persons and upon personal relations, into one based upon territory and upon property.

It is immaterial whether either of the seven so-called kings of Rome were real or mythical persons, or whether the legislation ascribed to either of them is fabulous or true, so far as this investigation is concerned: because the facts with respect to the ancient constitution of Latin society remained incorporated in Roman institutions, and thus came down to the historical period. It fortunately so happens that the events of human progress embody themselves, independently of particular men, in a material record, which is crystallized in institutions, usages and customs, and preserved in inventions and discoveries. Historians, from a sort of necessity, give to individuals great prominence in the production of events; thus placing persons, who are transient, in the place of principles, which are enduring. The work of society in its totality, by means of which all progress occurs, is ascribed far too much to individual men, and far too little to the public intelligence. It will be recognized generally that the substance of human history is bound up in the growth of ideas, which are wrought out by the people and expressed in their institutions, usages, inventions and discoveries.

The numerical adjustment, before adverted to, of ten gentes to a curia, ten curiæ to a tribe, and three tribes of the Roman people, was a result of legislative procurement not older, in the first two tribes, than the time of Romulus. It was made possible by the accessions gained from the surrounding tribes, by solicitation or conquest; the fruits of which were chiefly incorporated in the Tities and Luceres, as they were successively formed. But such a precise numerical adjustment could not be permanently maintained through centuries, especially with respect to the number of gentes in each curia.

We have seen that the Grecian phratry was rather a religious and social than a governmental organization. Holding an intermediate position between the gens and the tribe, it would be less important than either, until governmental functions were superadded. It appears among the Iroquois in a rudimentary form, its social as distinguished from its governmental character being at that early day equally well marked. But the Roman curia, whatever it may have been in the previous period, grew into an organization more integral and governmental than the phratry of the Greeks; more is known, however, of the former than of the latter. It is probable that the gentes comprised in each curia were, in the main, related gentes; and that their reunion in a higher organization was further cemented by intermarriages, the gentes of the same curia furnishing each other with wives.

The early writers give no account of the institution of the curia; but it does not follow that it was a new creation by Romulus. It is first mentioned as a Roman institution in connection with his legislation, the number of curiæ in two of the tribes having been established in his time. The organization, as a phratry, had probably existed among the Latin tribes from time immemorial.

Livy, speaking of the favor with which the Sabine women were regarded after the establishment of peace between the Sabines and Latins through their intervention, remarks that Romulus, for this reason, when he had divided the people into thirty curiæ bestowed upon them their names.[328] Dionysius uses the term phratry as the equivalent of curia, but gives the latter also (κουρία),[329] and observes further, that Romulus divided the curiæ into decades, the ten in each being of course gentes.[330] In like manner Plutarch refers to the fact that each tribe contained ten curiæ, which some say, he remarks, were called after the Sabine women.[331] He is more accurate in the use of language than Livy or Dionysius in saying that each tribe contained ten curiæ, rather than that each was divided into ten, because the curiæ were made of gentes as original unities, and not the gentes out of a curia by subdivision. The work performed by Romulus was the adjustment of the number of gentes in each curia, and the number of curiæ in each tribe, which he was enabled to accomplish through the accessions gained from the surrounding tribes. Theoretically each curia should have been composed of gentes derived by segmentation from one or more gentes, and the tribe by natural growth through the formation of more than one curia, each composed of gentes united by the bond of a common dialect. The hundred gentes of the Ramnes were Latin gentes. In their organization into ten curiæ, each composed of ten gentes, Romulus undoubtedly respected the bond of kin by placing related gentes in the same curia, as far as possible, and then reached numerical symmetry by arbitrarily taking the excess of gentes from one natural curia to supply the deficiency in another. The hundred gentes of the tribe Tities were, in the main, Sabine gentes. These were also arranged in ten curiæ, and most likely on the same principle. The third tribe, the Luceres, was formed later from gradual accessions and conquests. It was heterogeneous in its elements, containing, among others, a number of Etruscan gentes. They were brought into the same numerical scale of ten curiæ each composed of ten gentes. Under this re-constitution, while the gens, the unit of organization, remained pure and unchanged, the curia was raised above its logical level, and made to include, in some cases, a foreign element which did not belong to a strict natural phratry; and the tribe also was raised above its natural level, and made to embrace foreign elements that did not belong to a tribe as the tribe naturally grew. By this legislative constraint the tribes, with their curiæ and gentes, were made severally equal, while the third tribe was in good part an artificial creation under the pressure of circumstances. The linguistic affiliations of the Etruscans are still a matter of discussion. There is a presumption that their dialect was not wholly unintelligible to the Latin tribes, otherwise they would not have been admitted into the Roman social system, which at the time was purely gentile. The numerical proportions thus secured, facilitated the governmental action of the society as a whole.

Niebuhr, who was the first to gain a true conception of the institutions of the Romans in this period, who recognized the fact that the people were sovereign, that the so-called kings exercised a delegated power, and that the senate was based on the principle of representation, each gens having a senator, became at variance with the facts before him in stating in connection with this graduated scale, that “such numerical proportions are an irrefragible proof that the Roman houses [gentes][332] were not more ancient than the constitution; but corporations formed by a legislator in harmony with the rest of his scheme.”[333] That a small foreign element was forced into the curiæ of the second and third tribes, and particularly into the third, is undeniable; but that a gens was changed in its composition or reconstructed or made, was simply impossible. A legislator could not make a gens; neither could he make a curia, except by combining existing gentes around a nucleus of related gentes; but he might increase or decrease by constraint the number of gentes in a curia, and increase or decrease the number of curiæ in a tribe. Niebuhr has also shown that the gens was an ancient and universal organization among the Greeks and Romans, which renders his preceding declaration the more incomprehensible. Moreover it appears that the phratry was universal, at least among the Ionian Greeks, leaving it probable that the curia, perhaps under another name, was equally ancient among the Latin tribes. The numerical proportions referred to were no doubt the result of legislative procurement in the time of Romulus, and we have abundant evidence of the sources from which the new gentes were obtained with which these proportions might have been produced.