Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/52

28 the supply of daily food, is agriculture. At some time or other, then, the people, tribe, or stock will have taken possession of a district, either driving out an older population, or amalgamating with them in some way after conquest; and having thus settled down, will cease for a while to undergo further important changes, tending rather to fix and solidify the organisation, which was as it were only in solution, so long as they were constantly changing the conditions under which they lived. The Greek and Latin stocks, for example, when they wandered into the peninsulas which we know them as inhabiting, must have settled down on the land in some form of organisation, which grew more and more fixed and definite the longer they remained without further migration. We wish to know what this form was.

A vast amount of research has of late years been made and published on this subject; and the chief result of it which concerns us here has been to show (1) that before the final settlement on the land takes place, the main stock is always found to consist of groups or cells, held together by the tie of Kinship; (2) that after the settlement has taken place, these groups or cells are still found, but now fixed upon the land in forms which may roughly be described as village communities, consisting of a number of families united together.