Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/81

 GENTILE RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS 63 naming, tended t:> make the gentile tie more present to every one's mind at Rome than in the Greek cities. Before the pecuniary classification of the Atticans introduced by Solon, the phratries and ge.ntes, and the trittyes and nauk- raries, were the only recognized bonds among them, and the only basis of legal rights and obligations, over and above the natural family. The gens constituted a close incorporation, both as to property and as to persons. Until the time of Solon, no man had any power of testamentary disposition : if he died without children, his gennetes succeeded to his property, 1 and so they continued to do even after Solon, if he died intestate. An orphan girl might be claimed in marriage of right by any mem- ber of the gens, the nearest agnates being preferred ; a if she was poor, and he did not choose to marry her himself, the law of Solon compelled him to provide her with a dowry proportional to his enrolled scale of property, and to give her out in marriage to another ; and the magnitude of the dowry required to be given, large, even as fixed by Solon, and afterwards doubled, seems a proof that the lawgiver intended indirectly to enforce actual marriage. 3 If a man was murdered, first his near rela- tions, next his gennetes and phrators, were both allowed and required to prosecute the crime at law ; 4 his fellow demots, or 1 Plutarch, Solon. 21. We find a common cemetery exclusively belong- ing to the gens, and tenaciously preserved (Dcmosth. cont. Eubulid. p. 1307; Cicero, Lcgg. ii, 26). 2 Demosth. cont. Makartat. p. 1068. See the singular additional proviso in Plutarch, Solon, c. 20. 3 See Meursius, Themis Attica, i, 13. 4 That this was the primitive custom, and that the limitation fiXP l f uve-^n- aduv (Meier, De Bonis Damnat. p. 23, cites uvsipiaduv nal Qparopuv) was subsequently introduced (Dcmosth. cont. Euerg. et Mnesib. p. 1161 ), we may gather from the law as it stands in Demosth. cont. Makartat. p. 1069, which includes the phrators, and therefore, a fortiori, the gennetes, or gentiles. The same word yevof is used to designate both the circle of namcable relatives, brothers, first cousins (uy^/oreZc, Demosth. cont. Makartat. c. 9, p. 1058), etc., going beyond the okof, and the quasi-family, or gens. As the gentile tie tended to become weaker, so the former sense of the word became more and more current, to the extinction of the latter. Of iv yivei, or oi iy>o(T,y/coi'7fr, would have borne a wider sense in the days of Drako than in VOL. TTI. OOC.
 * tus, a Kolhokid. Such a difference in the habitual system of