Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/150

 144 THE FAMILY. BOOK II. later generations came to live, and by which all the branches of the family, however numerous they might be, remained grouped in a single body. What more does private law tell us of those ancient ages? While studying the nature of authority in the ancient family, we saw that the son did not separate from the father; while studying the rules for the transmission of the patrimony, we saw that, on account of the right of pri- mogeniture, the joungcr brothers did not separate from the oldest. Hearth, tomb, patrimony, all these, in the beginning, were indivisible. The family, consequently, was also indivisible. Time did not dismember it. This indivisible family, which developed through ages, per- petuating its worship and its name from century to century, was really the antique gens. The gens was the family, but the fimily having preserved the unity which its religion enjoined, and having attained all the development which ancient private law permitted it to attain.' ' We need not repeat what we have already said of agnation (B. II., ch. v). We can see that agnaiio and gentilitns — the relationship of the gentiles — flowed from the same principles, and were relationships of the same nature. The passage in the law of the Twelve Tables which assigns the inheritance to the gentiles, in default of a^rna^i, embarrassed the jurisconsults, and led to the opinion that there was an essential diflcrence between these two kinds of kinship. But this diffbrcnce is nowhere found. One was agnatus, as one was gentilis, by masculine de- scent and the religious bond. There was only a difference of degree, which began when the branches of the same gens were separated. The agnatus was a member of the branch ; the gen- tilis of the gens. There was therefore the same distinction between the terms gentilis and agnatus as between the words gens and familia. Familiam dicimus omnium agnatorum, says Ulpian in the Digest, L. tit., 10, § 195. One, when he was the agnate of a man, was, for a still stronger reason, his genti-