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heavy implement for athletic exercises ("Indian club," &c.); (2) one of
the four suits of playing-cards,--the translation of the Spanish
_basto_--represented by a black trefoil (taken from the French, in
which language it is _trefle_); (3) a term given to a particular form of
association of persons. It is to this third sense that this article is
devoted.

By the term "club," the most general word for which is in Gr. [Greek:
hetairia], in Lat. _sodalitas_, is here meant an association within the
state of persons not united together by any natural ties of kinship,
real or supposed. Modern clubs are dealt with below, and we begin with
an account of Greek and Roman clubs. Such clubs are found in all ancient
states of which we have any detailed knowledge, and seem to have dated
in one form or another from a very early period. It is not unreasonable
to suppose, in the absense of certain information, that the rigid system
of groups of kin, i.e. family, _gens_, _phratria_, &c., affording no
principle of association beyond the maintenance of society as it then
existed, may itself have suggested the formation of groups of a more
elastic and expansive nature; in other words, that clubs were an
expedient for the deliverance of society from a too rigid and
conservative principle of crystallization.

_Greek._--The most comprehensive statement we possess as to the various
kinds of clubs which might exist in a single Greek state is contained in
a law of Solon quoted incidentally in the Digest of Justinian (47.22),
which guaranteed the administrative independence of these associations
provided they kept within the bounds of the law. Those mentioned (apart
from demes and phratries, which were not clubs as here understood) are
associations for religious purposes, for burial, for trade, for,
privateering ([Greek: epi leian]), and for the enjoyment of common
meals. Of these by far the most important are the religious clubs, about
which we have a great deal of information, chiefly from inscriptions;
and these may be taken as covering those for burial purposes and for
common meals, for there can be no doubt that all such unions had
originally a religious object of some kind. But we have to add to
Solon's list the political [Greek: hetairiai] which we meet with in
Athenian history, which do not seem to have always had a religious
object, whatever their origin may have been; and it may be convenient to
clear the ground by considering these