Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/353

 the Greco-Roman family, which has, besides, served as a theme for so many writers. It certainly appears, contrary to the opinion of the Romans themselves, to have emerged tardily enough from the primitive clan or gens. This Roman gens was composed, really or fictitiously, of consanguine individuals, living under an elected chief, and having the same name. The union of several gentes formed the curia or the phratry. Grouped together, the phratries or curiæ constituted tribus. And lastly, the assembly of the tribus formed the nation: Rome or Athens. It is therefore the clan, or gens, and not the family, which has been at Rome, and at Athens the cellule, according to the fashionable expression, of ancient society.

At the dawn of history, these clans were already agnatic; they had adopted paternal filiation, and each of them claimed a common masculine ancestor; but the right of the gens to the heritage, and in certain cases the possession of an ''ager publicus'', still proved the antique community of property; and a number of indications and traditions bore witness in favour of the existence of a prehistoric phase of the maternal family, preceding agnation. Bachofen goes much further, and not without a show of reason. He insists, for example, that kinship in the Latin clan may at first have been confused. He alleges, on this point, that in the time of Numa the word parricide signified, not the murder of a father, but that of a free man of some sort; that in the family tribunal the cognates of the wife figured, and that the cognates wore mourning for each other; that the cognates of the wife, and those of the husband of a wife, had over her the jus osculi, or the right of embracing her, etc.; lastly, that the Etruscan Servius, the founder of plebeian liberty, was conceived, says the legend, during a great annual festival, when the people reverted to primitive sexual disorder.

The Greek [Greek: genos] resembled the Roman gens. Its members had a common sepulture, common property, the mutual obligation of the vendetta, and an archon.

In the protohistoric clans of Greece maternal filiation was first of all established. The Cretans said motherland