Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/138

 132 THE FAMILY. BOOK II. As the nature and constitution of the gens have been tnucli discussed, it may not be amiss here to point out what has constituted the difficulty of the problem. The gens^ as we shall see presently, formed a body whose constitution was radically aristocratic. It was through their internal organization that the patricians of Rome and the Eupatrids of Athens were able to perpetuate their privileges for so long a time. No sooner had the popular party gained the upper hand, tlian they attacked this old institution with all their power. If they had been able completely to destroy it, they would jirobably not have left us the slightest memorial of it. But it was singularly endowed with vitality, and deeply rooted in their manners, and they could not entirely blot it out. They therefore contented themselves with modifying it. They took away its essen- tial character, and left only its external features, which were not in the way of the new regime. Thus, at Rome, the plebeians undertook to form geiites, in imitation of the patricians ; at Athens they attempted to overthrow the gentes,to blend them together, and to replace them by the demes, which were established in imitation of them. AVe shall have to return to the subject when we speak of the revolutions. Let it suffice here for us to remark, that this profound alteration which the democracy introduced into the regime of the gens is of a nature to mislead those who undertake to learn its primitive constitution. Indeed, almost all the in- formation concerning it that has come down to us dates from the epoch wlien it had been thus transformed, and ehows us only that part which the revolutions had allowed to subsist. Let us suppose that, twenty centuries hence, all knowledge of the middle ages has perished; that there