Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/123

IV it had begun to force their way within the pale. Thus it is easy to see how the honourable pride of a noble descent, which for a while might help to engender the first feelings of duty to self and state, might also in course of time, under the continued influence of these groups of kin, serve to cherish and increase a spirit of exclusiveness. If a family grew weak or threatened to die out, there was no possibility of recruiting it from the class below, — a process which has always been the safeguard of our English nobility; it might be kept alive by intermarriage within the class to which it belonged, but by no fresh blood imported from the lower orders. At the very time when the noblest qualities of mind and body were being cultivated for the good of the State and the service of its king, these same qualities were beginning to be regarded more distinctly as the exclusive property of the members of the groups of ancient kin; while as the outside population increased in numbers, or the king increased his power, these groups were more and more brought into mutual alliance in opposition both to monarch and to people. This is the first illustration we meet with of the surviving power of the kinship groups in the city of which they were the original constituent elements; and it is most