Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/154

148 as the curiae elected also their own priests, we are justified in assuming the same in regard to gentile chiefs (principes)—no matter how well established the rule of choosing the candidates from the same family have been.

Such were the constitutional rights of a Roman gens. With the exception of the completed transition to paternal law, they are the true image of the rights and duties of an Iroquois gens. Here, also, "the Iroquois is still plainly visible."

How confused the ideas of our historians, even the most prominent of them, are when it comes to a discussion of the Roman gens, is shown by the following example: In Mommsen's treatise on the Roman family names of the Republican and Augustinian era (Römische Forschungen, Berlin, 1864, Vol. I.) he writes: "The gentile name was not only borne by all male gentiles including all adopted and wards, except, of course, the slaves, but also by the women.… The tribe (so Mommsen translates gens) is a common organization resulting from a common—actual, assumed or even invented—ancestor and united by common rites, burial grounds and customs of inheritance. All free individuals, hence women also, may and must claim membership in them. But the definition of the gentile name of the married women offers some difficulty. This is indeed obviated, as long as women were not permitted to marry any one but their gentiles. And we have proofs that for a long time the women found it much more difficult to marry outside than inside of the gens. This right of marrying outside, the gentis enuptio, was still bestowed as a personal privilege and reward during the sixth century.… But wherever such outside marriages occurred in primeval times, the woman must have been transferred to the tribe of her husband. Nothing is more certain than that by the old religious marriage woman