Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/149

 CHAP. X. THE GENS AT EOME AND IN GREECE. 143 A little later another branch took the surname of Rufus, which it replaced afterwards by that of Sylla. The Lentiili do not appear till the tirae of the Samnite wars, the Cethegi not until the second Punic war. It is the same with the Claudian gens. The Claudii remained a long time united in a single family, and all bore tho surname of Sabinus or of Regillensis, a sign of their origin. We follow them for seven generations without seeing any branches formed in this family, although it had become very numerous. It was only in the eighth, that is to say, in the time of the first Punic war, that we see three branches separate, and adopt three sur- names which became hereditary with them. These were the Pulchri, who continued during two centuries; the Centhos, who soon became extinct, and the Neros, who continued to the time of the empire. From all this it is clear that the gens was not an association of families, but that it was the family itself. It might either comprise only a single line, or produce several branches; it was always but one family. Besides, it is easy to account for the formation of the antique gens and for its nature, if we but refer to the old belief and to the old institutions that we hav^ already described. We shall see, even, that the gen^ is derived very naturally from the domestic religion and from the private law of the ancient ages. Indeed, what did this primitive religion prescribe ? That the ances- tor, that is to say, the man who was first buried in the tomb, should be perpetually honored as a god, and that his descendants, assembled every year near the sacred place where he reposed, should offer him the funeral repast. This fire always kept burning, this tomb always hon- ored with a worship, were the centre around which all