Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/146

 140 THE FAMILY. BOOK II. from him. To counterfeit a tomb, to establish anniver- saries and an annual worship, would have been to cany falsehood into what they held most dear, and to trifle with religion. Such a fiction was possible in the time of Cajsar, when the old family religion was cher- ished by nobody. But if we go back to the time when this creed was in its vigor, we cannot imagine that sev- eral families, taking part in the same imposture, could say to each other, We will pretend to have a common ancestor; we will erect him a tomb; we will offer him funeral repasts; and our descendants shall adore him in all future time. Such a thought could not have pre- sented itself to their minds, or it would have been scouted as an impiety. In the difficult problems often found in history, it is well to seek from the terms of language all the instruc- tion which they can afford. An institution is some- times explained by the word that designates it. Now, the word gens means exactly the same as the word genus ; so completely alike are they that we can take the one for the other, and say, indifferently, gens Fabia and genus Fahiian; both correspond to the verb gig- nere and to the substantive genitor^ precisely as y^vng corresponds to yefvui' and to yopeig. AH these worda convey the same idea of filiation. The Greeks also designated the members of a yipo; by the word otioy/'x- iaxTf--, which signifies nourished by the same milk. Let these words be compared with those which we are ac- customed to translate by famihj — the Latin familia^ the Greek Ziy-o;. Neither of these last has the sense of generation or of kinship. The true signification of familia is property; it designates the field, the house, money, and slaves; and it is for this reason that the Twelve Tables say, in speaking of the heir, familiani-