Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/147

 CHAP. X. THE GENS AT KOME AND IN GEEECE, 141 nancitor — let him take the succession. As to Ziy.o;, it is clear that this word presents to the mind no other idea than that of property or of domicile. And yet these are the words that we habitually translate by family. Xow, is it admissible that terras whose intrinsic meaning is that of domicile or property were often used to designate a family, and that other words whose primary sense is fili- ation, birth, paternity, have never designated anything but an artificial association ? Certainly this would not be in conformity with the logic, so direct and clear, of the ancient languages. It is unquestionable that the Greeks and the Romans attached to the words gens and yho; the idea of a common origin. This idea might have become obscured after the gens was modified, but the word has remained to bear witness of it. The theory that presents the gens as a factitious association has against it, therefore, 1st, the old legis- hition, which gives the gentiles the right of inheritance ; 2, the old religion, which allowed a common worsiiip only where there was a common parentage; 3d, the terms of lanijuacre, which attest in the jjens a common orimn. The theory has also this other defect, that it supposes human societies to have commenced by a convention and an artifice — a position which historical science can- not admit as true. 8. The Gens is the Family still holding its primitive Organization and its Unity. All the evidence presents us the gens as united by the tie of birth. Let us again consult Inngunge: the names of the gentes, in Greece as well as in Rome, all have the form which was used in the two languages for patronymics. Claudius signifies the son of Clausus, and Butadi, the sons of Butes.