Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/122

98, and bringing them into antagonism, perhaps almost at the same time, with the kingly family as well as with the unprivileged masses. Let us see how it might have acted.

1. We saw that the Homeric chieftains believed themselves to be — of divine descent; and this idea was kept up for centuries by the great families in most Greek States. Even in democratic Athens Alcibiades could boast to his teacher Socrates that he was descended from Zeus, and in other States examples are abundant. At Rome too the same boast could be made; the Julii, e.g., were descended from Venus and Anchises. Thus the claim of high birth was a much more powerful one than it has ever been in England, or even in France. But there was another and yet stronger reason why in the City-State these families should tend to become peculiarly exclusive. Let us recall the fact that the State had grown out of smaller communities, which survived within it as gentes or, each a close corporation, with its own religious rites, its own government within the State, its own traditions and prejudices. Whether these corporations consisted entirely, as at Rome, of patrician families, or included others belonging to the lower population, as was probably the case at Athens, they were always strongholds of an exclusive nobility. To marry outside the circle of this nobility was a desecration of the sacred rites and traditions of the noble family or gens, and continued to be thought so long after those outside