nts of the wolf' in Ossory, and practised
a wolf-dance in which they imitated the actions of the animal.

Such is a summary of the evidence which shows that Aryans had once been
totemists, therefore savages, and therefore, again, had probably been in
a stage when women were scarce and each woman had many husbands.

Evidence from the Gens or [Greek].--There is no more puzzling topic in
the history of the ancient world than the origin and nature of the
community called by the Romans the gens, and by the Greeks the [Greek].
To the present writer it seems that no existing community of men, neither
totem kin, nor clan, nor house community, nor gotra, precisely answers to
the gens or the [Greek]. Our information about these forms of society is
slight and confused. The most essential thing to notice for the moment
is the fact that both in Greece and Rome the [Greek] and gens were
extremely ancient, so ancient that the [Greek] was decaying in Greece
when history begins, while in Rome we can distinctly see the rapid
decadence and dissolution of the gens. In the Laws of the Twelve Tables,
the gens is a powerful and respected corporation. In the time of Cicero
the nature of the gens is a matter but dimly understood. Tacitus begins
to be confused about the gentile nomenclature. In the Empire gentile law
fades away. In Greece, especially at Athens, the early political reforms
transferred power from the [Greek] to a purely local organisation, the
Deme. The Greek of historical times did not announce his [Greek] in his
name (as the Romans always did), but gave his own name, that of his
father, and that of his deme. Thus we may infer that in Greek and Roman
society the [Greek] and gens were dying, not growing, organisations. In
very early times it is probable that foreign gentes were adopted en bloc
into the Roman Commonwealth. Very probably, too, a great family, on
entering the Roman bond, may have assumed, by a fiction, the character
and name of a gens. But that Roman society in historical times, or that
Greek society, could evolve a new gens or [Greek] in a normal natural
way, seems excessively improbable.

Keeping in mind the antique and 'obsolescent' character of the gens and
[Greek], let us examine the theories of the origin of these associations.
The Romans themselves knew very little about the matter. Cicero quotes
the dictum of Scaevola the Pontifex, according to which the gens
consisted of _all persons of the sam