free Athenian citizens, women and children included, amounted to about 90,000; the slaves of both sexes numbered 365,000 and the aliens--foreigners and freed slaves--45,000. Per capita of each adult citizen there were, therefore, at least eighteen slaves and more than two aliens. The great number of slaves is explained by the fact that many of them worked together in large factories under supervision. The development of commerce and industry brought about an accumulation and concentration of wealth in a few hands. The mass of the free citizens were impoverished and had to face the choice of either competing with their own labor against slave labor, which was considered ignoble and vile, besides promising little success, or to be ruined. Under the prevailing circumstances they necessarily chose the latter course and being in the majority they ruined the whole Attic state. Not democracy caused the downfall of Athens, as the European glorifiers of princes and lickspittle schoolmasters would have us believe, but slavery ostracizing the labor of the free citizen.
The origin of the state among the Athenians presents a very typical form of state organization. For it took place without any marring external interference or internal obstruction--the usurpation of Pisistratos left no trace of its short duration. It shows the direct rise of a highly developed form of a state, the democratic republic, out of gentile society. And finally, we are sufficiently acquainted with all the essential details of the process.
CHAPTER VI.
GENS AND STATE IN ROME.
The legend of the foundation of Rome sets forth that the first colonization was undertaken by a number of Latin gentes (one hundred, so the legend says) united into one tribe. A Sabellian tribe (also said to consist of one hundred gentes) soon followed, and finally a third tribe of various elements, but again numbering one hundred gentes, joined them. The whole tale reveals at the first glance that little more than the gens was borrowed from reality, and that the gens itself was in certain cases only an offshoot of an old mother gens still existing at home. The tribes bear the mark of artificial composition on their foreheads; still they were made up of kindred elements and after the model of the old spontaneous, not artificial tribe. At the same time it is not impossible that a genuine old tribe formed the nucleus of every one of these three tribes. The connecting link, the phratry, contained ten gentes and was called curia. Hence there were thirty curiae.
The Roman gens is recognized as an institution identical with the Grecian gens. The Grecian gens being a continuation of the same social unit, the primordial form of which we found among the American Indians, the same holds naturally good of the Roman gens, and we can be more concise in its treatment.
At least during the most ancient times of the city, the Roman gens had the following constitution: 1. Mutual right of inheritance for gentiles; the wealth remained in the gens. Paternal law being already in force in the Roman the same as in the Grecian gens, the offspring of female lineage were excluded.
According to the law of the twelve tablets, the oldest written law of Rome known to us, the natural children had the first title to the estate; in case no natural children existed, the agnati (kin of male lineage) took their place; and last in line came the gentiles. In all cases the property remained in the gens. Here we observe the gradual introduction of new legal provisions, caused by increased wealth and monogamy, into the gentile practice. The originally equal right of inheritance of the gentiles was first limited in practice to the agnati, no doubt at a very remote date, and afterwards to the natural children and their offspring of male lineage. Of course this appears in the reverse order on the twelve tablets.
2. Possession of a common burial ground. The patrician gens Claudia, on immigrating into Rome from Regilli, was assigned to a separate lot of land and received its own burial ground in the city. As late as the time of Augustus, the head of Varus, who had been killed in the Teutoburger Wald, was brought to Rome and interred in the gentilitius tumulus; hence his gens (Quinctilia) still had its own tomb.
3. Common religious rites. These are well-known under the name of sacra gentilitia.
4. Obligation not to intermarry in the gens. It seems that this was never a written law in Rome, but the custom remained. Among the innumerable names of Roman couples preserved for us there is not a single case, where husband and wife had the same gentile name. The law of inheritance proves the same rule. By marrying, a woman loses her agnatic privileges, discards her gens, and neither she nor her children have any title to her father's estate nor to that of his brothers, because otherwise the gens of her father would lose his property. This rule has a meaning only then when the woman is not permitted to marry a gentile.
5. A common piece of land. In primeval days this was always obtained when the tribal territory was first divided. Among the Latin tribes we find the land partly in the possession of the tribe, partly of the gens, and partly of the households that could hardly represent single families at such an early date. Romulus is credited with being the first to assign land to single individuals, about 2.47 acres (two jugera) per head. But later on we still find some land in the hands of the gentes, not to mention the state land, around which turns the whole internal history of the republic.
6. Duty of the gentiles to mutually protect and assist one another.
Written history records only remnants of this law. The Roman state from the outset manifested such superior power, that the duty of protection against injury devolved upon it. When Appius Claudius was arrested, his whole gens, including his personal enemies, dressed in mourning. At the time of the second Punic war the gentes united for the purpose of ransoming their captured gentiles. The senate vetoed this.
7. Right to bear the gentile name. This was in force until the time of the emperors. Freed slaves were permitted to assume the gentile name of their former master, but this did not bestow any gentile rights on them.
8. Right of adopting strangers into the gens. This was done by adoption into the family (the same as among the Indians) which brought with it the adoption into the gens.
9. The right to elect and depose chiefs is not mentioned anywhere. But inasmuch as during the first years of Rome's existence all offices were filled by election or nomination, from the king downward, and 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 (Roemische 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 was completely adopted into the legal and sacramental group of her husband and divorced from her own. Who does not know that the married woman releases her active and passive right of inheritance in favor of her gentiles, but enters the legal group of her husband, her children and his gentiles? And if her husband adopts her as his child into his family, how can she remain separated from his gens?" (Pages 9-11.)
Here Mommsen asserts that the Roman women belonging to a certain gens were originally free to marry only within their gens; the Roman gens, according to him, was therefore endogamous, not exogamous. This opinion which contradicts the evidence of all other nations, is principally, if not exclusively, founded on a single much disputed passage of Livy (Book xxxix, c. 19). According to this passage, the senate decreed in the year 568 of the city, i. e., 186 B. C., (uti Feceniae Hispallae datio, deminutio, gentis enuptio, tutoris optio idem esset quasi ei vir testamento dedisset; utique ei ingenuo nubere liceret, neu quid ei qui eam duxisset, ob id fraudi ignominiaeve esset)--that Fecenia Hispalla shall have the right to dispose of her property, to diminish it, to marry outside of the gens, to choose a guardian, just as if her (late) husband had conferred this right on her by testament; that she shall be permitted to marry a freeman and that for the man who marries her this shall not constitute a misdemeanor or a shame.
Without a doubt Fecenia, a freed slave, here obtains permission to marry outside of the gens. And equally doubtless the husband here has the right to confer on his wife by testament the right to marry outside of the gens after his death. But outside of which gens?
If a woman had to intermarry in the gens, as Mommsen assumes, then she remained in this gens after her marriage. But in the first place, this assertion of an endogamous gens must be proven. And in the second place, if the women had to intermarry in the gens, then the men had to do the same, otherwise there could be no marriage. Then we arrive at the conclusion that the man could bequeath a right to his wife, which he did not have for himself. This is a legal impossibility. Mommsen feels this very well, and hence he supposes: "The marriage outside of the gens most probably required not only the consent of the testator, but of all gentiles." (Page 10, footnote.) This is not only a very daring assertion, but contradicts also the clear wording of the passage. The senate gives her this right as a proxy of her husband; they expressly give her no more and no less than her husband could have given her, but what they do give is an absolute right, independent of all limitations, so that, if she should make use of it, her new husband shall not suffer in consequence. The senate even instructs the present and future consuls and praetors to see that no inconvenience arise to her from the use of this right. Mommsen's supposition is therefore absolutely inadmissible.
Then again: suppose a woman married a man from another gens, but remained in her own gens. According to the passage quoted above, her husband would then have had the right to permit his wife to marry outside of her own gens. That is, he would have had the right to make provisions in regard to the affairs of a gens to which he did not belong at all. The thing is so utterly unreasonable that we need not lose any words about it.
Nothing remains but to assume that the woman in her first marriage wedded a man from another gens and thereby became a member of her husband's gens. Mommsen admits this for such cases. Then the whole matter at once explains itself. The woman, torn away from her old gens by her marriage and adopted into the gentile group of her husband, occupies a peculiar position in the new gens. She is now a gentile, but not a kin by blood. The manner of her entrance from the outset excludes all prohibition of intermarrying in the gens, into which she has come by marriage. She is adopted into the family relations of the gens and inherits some of the property of her husband when he dies, the property of a gentile. What is more natural than that this property should remain in the gens and that she should be obliged to marry a gentile of her husband and no other? If, however, an exception is to be made, who is so well entitled to authorize her as her first husband who bequeathed his property to her? At the moment when he bequeathes on her a part of his property and simultaneously gives her permission to transfer this property by marriage or as a result of marriage to a strange gens, he still is the owner of this property, hence he literally disposes of his personal property. As for the woman and her relation to the gens of her husband, it is he who by an act of his own free will--the marriage--introduced her into his gens. Therefore it seems quite natural that he should be the proper person to authorize her to leave this gens by another marriage. In short, the matter appears simple and obvious, as soon as we discard the absurd conception of an endogamous Roman gens and accept Morgan's originally exogamous gens.
There is still another view which has probably found the greatest number of advocates. According to them the passage in Livy only means "that freed slave girls (libertae) cannot without special permission, e gente enubere (marry outside of the gens) or undertake any of the steps which, together with capitis deminutio minima[25] (the loss of family rights) would lead to a transfer of the liberta to another gens." (Lange, Roemische Alterthuemer, Berlin, 1856, I, p. 185, where our passage from Livy is explained by a reference to Huschke.) If this view is correct, then the passage proves still less for the relations of free Roman women, and there is so much less ground for speaking of their obligation to intermarry in the gens.
The expression enuptio gentis (marriage outside of the gens) occurs only in this single passage and is not found anywhere else in the entire Roman literature. The word enubere (to marry outside) is found only three times likewise in Livy, and not in reference to the gens. The phantastic idea that Roman women had to intermarry in the gens owes its existence only to this single passage. But it cannot be maintained. For either the passage refers to special restrictions for freed slave women, in which case it proves nothing for free women (ingenuae). Or it applies also to free women, in which case it rather proves that the women as a rule married outside of the gens and were transferred by their marriage to their husbands' gens. This would be a point for Morgan against Mommsen.
Almost three hundred years after the foundation of Rome the gentile bonds were still so strong that a patrician gens, the Fabians, could obtain permission from the senate to undertake all by itself a war expedition against the neighboring town of Veii. Three hundred and six Fabians are said to have marched and to have been killed from ambush.
Only one boy was left behind to propagate the gens.
Ten gentes, we said, formed a phratry, named curia. It was endowed with more important functions than the Grecian phratry. Every curia had its own religious rites, sacred possessions and priests. The priests of one curia in a body formed one of the Roman clerical collegiums. Ten curiae formed a tribe which probably had originally its own elected chief--leader in war and high priest--like the rest of the Latin tribes.
The three tribes together formed the populus Romanus, the Roman people.
Hence nobody could belong to the Roman people, unless he was a member of a Roman gens, and thus a member of a curia and tribe. The first constitution of the Roman people was as follows. Public affairs were conducted by the Senate composed, as Niebuhr was the first to state correctly, of the chiefs of the three hundred gentes. Because they were the elders of the gentes they were called patres, fathers, and as a body senatus, council of elders, from senex, old. Here also the customary choice of men from the same family of the gens brought to life the first hereditary nobility. These families were called patricians and claimed the exclusive right to the seats in the senate and to all other offices.
The fact that in the course of time the people admitted this claim so that it became an actual privilege is confirmed by the legendary report that Romulus bestowed the rank of patrician and its privileges on the first senators. The senate, like the Athenian boule, had to make the final decision in many affairs and to undertake the preliminary discussion of more important matters, especially of new laws. These were settled by the public meeting, the so-called comitia curiata (assembly of curiae.) The people met in curiae, probably grouped by gentes, and every one of the thirty curiae had one vote. The assembly of curiae adopted or rejected all laws, elected all higher officials including the rex (so-called king), declared war (but the senate concluded peace), and decided as a supreme court, on appeal, all cases involving capital punishment of Roman citizens. By the side of the senate and the public meeting stood the rex, corresponding to the Grecian basileus, and by no means, such an almost absolute king as Mommsen would have it.[26] The rex was also a military leader, a high priest and a chairman of certain courts. He had no other functions, nor any power over life, liberty and property of the citizens, except such as resulted from his disciplinary power as military leader or from his executive power as president of a court. The office of rex was not hereditary. On the contrary, he was elected, probably on the suggestion of his predecessor, by the assembly of curiae and then solemnly invested by a second assembly. That he could also be deposed is proved by the fate of Tarquinius Superbus.
As the Greeks at the time of the heroes, so the Romans at the time of the so-called kings lived in a military democracy based on and developed from a constitution of gentes, phratries and tribes. What though the curiae and tribes were partly artificial formations, they were moulded after the genuine and spontaneous models of a society from which they originated and that still surrounded them on all sides. And though the sturdy patrician nobility had already gained ground, though the reges attempted gradually to enlarge the scope of their functions--all this does not change the elementary and fundamental character of the constitution, and this alone is essential.
Meantime the population of the city of Rome and of the Roman territory, enlarged by conquest, increased partly by immigration, partly through the inhabitants of the annexed districts, Latins most of them. All these new members of the state (we disregard here the clients) stood outside of the old gentes, curiae and tribes and so did not form a part of the populus Romanus, the Roman people proper. They were personally free, could own land, had to pay taxes and were subject to military service.
But they were not eligible to office and could neither take part in the assembly of curiae nor in the distribution of conquered state lands.
They made up the mass of people excluded from all public rights, the plebs. By their continually growing numbers, their military training and armament they became a threat for the old populus who now closed their ranks hermetically against all new elements. The land seems to have been about evenly divided between populus and plebs, while the mercantile and industrial wealth, though as yet not very considerable, may have been mainly in the hands of the plebs.
In view of the utter darkness that enwraps the whole legendary origin of Rome's historical beginning--a darkness that was rendered still more intense by the rationalistic and overofficious interpretations and reports of the juristically trained authors that wrote on the subject--it is impossible to make any definite statements about the time, the course and the motive of the revolution that put an end to the old gentile constitution. We are certain only that the causes arose out of the fights between the plebs and the populus.
The new constitution, attributed to rex Servius Tullius and following the Grecian model, more especially that of Solon, created a new public assembly including or excluding all the members of populus and plebs according to whether they rendered military service or not. The whole population, subject to enlistment, was divided into six classes according to wealth. The lowest limitis in the five highest classes 11,000; which according to Dureau de la Malle is equal to about $3,155, $2,333, $1,555, $800, and $388. The sixth class, the proletarians, consisted of those who possessed less and were exempt from military service and taxes. In this new assembly of centuriae (comitia centuriata) the citizens formed ranks after the manner of soldiers, in companies of one hundred (centuria), and every centuria had one vote.
Now the first class placed 80 centuriae in the field; the second 22, the third 20, the fourth 22, the fifth 30 and the sixth, for propriety's sake, one. To this were added 18 centuriae of horsemen composed of the most wealthy. Hence, there were 193 centuriae, giving a lowest majority vote of 97. Now the horsemen and the first class alone had together 98 votes. Being in the majority, they had only to agree, and they could pass any resolution without asking the consent of the other classes.
This new assembly of centuriae assumed all the political rights of the former assembly of curiae, a few nominal privileges excepted. The curiae and the gentes composing them now were degraded to mere private and religious congregations, analogous to their Attic prototypes, and as such they vegetated on for a long time. But the assembly of curiae soon became obsolete. In order to drive also the three old tribes out of existence, a system of four local tribes was introduced. Every tribe was assigned to one quarter of the city and received certain political rights.
Thus the old social order of blood kinship was destroyed also in Rome even before the abolition of the so-called royalty. A new constitution, founded on territorial division and difference of wealth took its place and virtually created the state. The public power of coercion consisted here of citizens liable to military duty, to be used against the slaves and the so-called proletarians who were excluded from military service and general armament.
After the expulsion of the last rex, Tarquinius Superbus, who had really usurped royal power, the new constitution was further improved by the institution of two military leaders (consuls) with equal powers, analogous to the custom of the Iroquois. The whole history of the Roman republic moves inside of this constitution: the struggles between patricians and plebs for admission to office and participation in the allotment of state lands, the merging of the patrician nobility in the new class of large property and money owners; the gradual absorption by the latter of all the land of the small holders who had been ruined by military service; the cultivation of these enormous new tracts by slaves; the resulting depopulation of Italy which not only opened the doors to the imperial tyrants, but also to their successors, the German barbarians.
FOOTNOTES: The term caput received the meaning of legal right of a person from the legal status of the head of a family...Legal science extended the meaning of the term so that it related not alone to slaves, but also to minors and women. This legal right, so conceived, could be curtailed in three ways: Capitis deminutio maxima was the loss of the status libertatis (personal liberty), which included the loss of the status civitatis and familiae (civil and family rights); the capitis deminutio minor or media was the loss of the status civitatis (civil rights), including the loss of the status familiae (family rights); the capitis deminutio minima was the loss of the status familiae (family rights).
Lange, Roemische Alterthuemer, Berlin, 1876, Vol. I., p. 204.
[26] Author's note.
The Latin rex is equivalent to the Celtic-Irish righ (tribal chief) and the Gothic reiks. That this, like the German Fuerst, English first and Danish forste, originally signified gentile or tribal chief is evident from the fact that the Goths in the fourth century already had a special term for the king of later times, the military chief of a whole nation, viz., thiudans. In Ulfila's translation of the Bible Artaxerxes and Herod are never called reiks, but thiudans, and the empire of the emperor Tiberius not reiki, but thiudinassus. In the name of the Gothic thiudans, or king as we inaccurately translate, Thiudareiks (Theodoric, German Dietrich), both names flow together.
CHAPTER VII.
THE GENS AMONG CELTS AND GERMANS.
Space forbids a consideration of the gentile institutions found in a more or less pure form among the savage and barbarian races of the present day; or of the traces of such institutions, discovered in the ancient history of civilized nations in Asia. One or the other are met everywhere. A few illustrations may suffice: Even before the gens had been recognized, it was pointed out and accurately described in its main outlines by the man who took the greatest pains to misunderstand it, McLennan, who wrote of this institution among the Kalmucks, the Circassians, the Samoyeds and three Indian nations: the Warals, the Magars and the Munnipurs. Recently it was described by M. Kovalevsky, who discovered it among the Pshavs, Shevsurs, Svanets and other Caucasian tribes. A few short notes about the existence of the gens among Celts and Germans may find a place here.
The oldest Celtic laws preserved for us still show the gens in full bloom. In Ireland, it is alive in the popular instinct to this day, after it has been forced out of actual existence by the English. It was in full force in Scotland until the middle of the eighteenth century, and here it also succumbed only to the weapons, laws and courts of the English.
The old Welsh laws, written several centuries before the English invasion, not later than the 11th century, still show collective agriculture of whole villages, although only exceptionally and as the survival of a former universal custom. Every family had five acres for its special use; another lot was at the same time cultivated collectively and its yield divided among the different families. In view of Irish and Scotch analogies it cannot be doubted that these village communities represent gentes or subdivisions of gentes, even though a repeated investigation of the Welsh laws, which I cannot undertake from lack of time (my notes are from 1869), should not directly corroborate this. One thing, however, is plainly proven by the Welsh and Irish laws, namely that the pairing family had not yet given way to monogamy among the Celts of the 11th century. In Wales, marriage did not become indissoluble by divorce, or rather by notification, until after seven years. Even if no more than three nights were lacking to make up the seven years, a married couple could still separate. Their property was divided among them: the woman made the division, the man selected his share. The furniture was divided according to certain very funny rules.
If the marriage was dissolved by the man, he had to return the woman's dowry and a few other articles; if the woman wished a separation, then she received less. Of three children the man took two, the woman one, viz., the second child. If the woman married again after her divorce, and her first husband claimed her back, she was obliged to follow him, even if she had one foot in her new husband's bed. But if two had lived together for seven years, they were considered man and wife, even without the preliminaries of a formal marriage. Chasteness of the girls before marriage was by no means strictly observed, nor was it required.
The regulations regarding this subject are of an extremely frivolous nature and in contradiction with civilized morals. When a woman committed adultery, her husband had a right to beat her--this was one of three cases when he could do so without incurring a penalty--but after that he could not demand any other satisfaction, for "the same crime shall either be atoned for or avenged, but not both." The reasons that entitled a woman to a divorce without curtailing her claims to a fair settlement were of a very diverse nature: bad breath of the man was sufficient. The ransom to be paid to the chief or king for the right of the first night (gobr merch, hence the medieval name marcheta, French marquette) plays a conspicuous part in the code of laws. The women had the right to vote in the public meetings. Add to this that similar conditions are vouched for in Ireland; that marriage on time was also quite the custom there, and that the women were assured of liberal and well defined privileges in case of divorce, even to the point of remuneration for domestic services; that a "first wife" existed by the side of others, and that legal and illegal children without distinction received a share of their deceased parent's property--and we have a picture of the pairing family among the Celts. The marriage laws of the American Indians seem strict in comparison to the Celtic, but this is not surprising when we remember that the Celts were still living in group marriage at Cesar's time.
The Irish gens (Sept; the tribe was called clainne, clan) is confirmed and described not alone by the ancient law codes, but also by the English jurists of the 17th century who were sent across for the purpose of transforming the clan lands into royal dominions. Up to this time, the soil had been the collective property of the gens or the clan, except where the chiefs had already claimed it as their private dominion. When a gentile died, and a household was thus dissolved, the gentile chief (called caput cognationis by the English jurists) made a new assignment of the whole gentile territory to the rest of the household. This division of land probably took place according to such rules as were observed in Germany. Until about fifty years ago, village marks were quite frequent, and some of these so-called rundales may be found to this day. The farmers of a rundale, individual tenants on the soil that once was the collective property of the gens, but had been confiscated by the English conquerors, each pay the rent for his respective parcel. But they all combine their lands and parcel it off according to situation and quality. These parcels, called "Gewanne" on the German river Mosel, are cultivated collectively and their yield is divided into shares. Marshland and pastures are used in common. Fifty years ago, new divisions were still made occasionally, sometimes annually. The field map of such a rundale village looks exactly like that of a German "Gehoeferschaft" (farming commune) on the Mosel or in the Hochwald. The gens also survives in the "factions." The Irish farmers often form parties that seem to be founded on absolutely contradictory or senseless distinctions, quite incomprehensible to Englishmen. The only purpose of these factions is apparently to rally for the popular sport of hammering the life out of one another. They are artificial reincarnations, modern substitutes for the dispersed gentes that demonstrate the continuation of the old gentile instinct in their own peculiar manner. By the way, in some localities the gentiles are still living together on what is practically their old territory. During the thirties, for instance, the great majority of the inhabitants of the old county of Monaghan had only four family names, i. e., they were descended from four gentes or tribes (clans).[27] The downfall of the gentile order in Scotland dates from the suppression of the revolt in 1745. What link of this order the Scotch clan represented remains to be investigated; that it is a link, is beyond doubt. Walter Scott's novels bring this Scotch highland clan vividly before our eyes. It is, as Morgan says, "an excellent type of the gens in organization and in spirit, and an extraordinary illustration of the power of the gentile life over its members...We find in their feuds and blood revenge, in their localization by gentes, in their use of lands in common, in the fidelity of the clansman to his chief and of the members of the clan to each other, the usual and persistent features of gentile society...Descent was in the male line, the children of the males remaining members of the clan, while the children of its female members belonged to the clans of their respective fathers." The fact that matriarchal law was formerly in force in Scotland is proved by the royal family of the Picts, who according to Beda observed female lineage. Even a survival of the Punaluan family had been preserved among the Scots, as among the Welsh. For until the middle ages, the chief of the clan or king, the last representatives of the former common husbands, had the right to claim the first night with every bride, unless a ransom was given.
It is an indisputable fact, that the Germans were organized in gentes up to the time of the great migrations. The territory between the Danube, the Rhine, the Vistula and the northern seas was evidently occupied by them only a few centuries before Christ. The Cimbri and Teutons were then still in full migration, and the Suebi did not settle down until Cesar's time. Cesar expressly states that they settled down in gentes and kins (gentibus cognatibusque), and in the mouth of a Roman of the gens Julia this term gentibus has a definite meaning, that no amount of disputation can obliterate. This holds good for all Germans.
It seems that even the provinces taken by them from the Romans were settled by distribution to gentes. The Alemanian code of laws affirms that the people settled in gentes (genealogiae) on the conquered land south of the Danube. Genealogia is used in exactly the same sense as was later on Mark--or Dorfgenossenschaft (mark or village community).
Kovalevsky recently maintained that these genealogiae were the great household communities among which the land was divided, and from which the village communities developed later on. The same may be true of the fara, by which term the Burgundians and Langobards--a Gothic and a Herminonian or High German tribe--designated nearly, if not exactly, the