Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/145

 •Cn.P. X. THE GEJfS AT ROME AND IN GREECE. 189 culine kinship. Can we suppose that ancient law de^ viated so far from this principle as to accord the right of succession to the gentiles if they had been strangers to each other? The best established and most prominent character- istic of the gens is, that, like the family, it had a worship. Now, if we inquire what god each adores, we find almost always that it is a deified ancestor, and that the altar where the sacrifice is offered is a tomb. At Athens the Eu- molpidae worshipped Eumolpus, the author of their race; the Phytalida) adored the hero Phytalus; the Butadse, Butes; the Buselidaj, Buselua; the Lakiada3, Lakios; the Amynandridae, Cecrops.' At Rome the Claudii are descended from a Clausus ; the Cfficilii honored as chief of their race the hero CjbcuIus ; the Culpurnii, a Calpus ; the Julii, a Julus; the Clcelii, a Clcelus,^ We may easily suppose, it is true, that many of these genealogies were an afterthought ; but we must admit that this sort of imposture would have hud no motive if it had not been a constant usage among the real gen- tes to recognize and to worship a common ancestor. Falsehood always seeks to imitate the truth. Besides, the imposture was not so easy as it might seem to us. This worship was not a vain formality for jsarade. One of the most rigorous rules of the religion was, that no one should honor as an ancestor any except those from whom he was really descended ; to offer this worship to a stranger was a grave impiety. If, then, the members of a ge7is adored a common ancestor, it "was because they really believed they were descended ^ Demosthenes, in Macart., 79. Tausanias, I. 87. Inscrip- tion of the AmynandridcB, cited by IJoss, p. 24. ' Festus, CcBculus, Calpurnii, Glalii,