Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/129

123 Grote is quoted with preference by Morgan as a prominent and quite trustworthy witness. He relates that every Attic gens had a name derived from its alleged ancestor; that before Solon's time, and even after, it was customary for the gentiles (gennêtes) to inherit the fortunes of their intestate deceased; and that in case of murder first the relatives of the victim had the duty and the right to prosecute the criminal, after them the gentiles and finally the phrators. "Whatever we may learn about the oldest Attic laws is founded on the organization in gentes and phratries." The descent of the gentes from common ancestors has caused the "schoolbred philistines," as Marx has it, much worry. Representing this descent as purely mythical, they are at a loss to explain how the gentes developed out of independent and wholly unrelated families. But this explanation must be given, if they wish to explain the existence of the gentes. They then turn around in a circle of meaningless gibberish and do not get beyond the phrase: the pedigree is indeed a fable, but the gens is a reality. Grote finally winds up—the parenthetical remarks are by Marx: "We rarely hear about this pedigree, because it is used in public only on certain very festive occasions. But the less prominent gentes had their common religious rites (very peculiar, Mr. Grote!) and their common superhuman ancestor and pedigree just like the more prominent gentes (how very peculiar this, Mr. Grote, in less prominent gentes!); and the ground plan and the ideal fundament (my dear sir! Not ideal, but carnal, anglice "fleshly") was the same in all of them."

Marx sums up Morgan's reply to this as follows: "The system of consanguinity corresponding to the archaic form of the gens—which the Greeks once possessed like other mortals—preserved the knowledge of the mutual relation of all members of the gens.