hratries of a
tribe had certain religious festivals in common that recurred at regular
intervals and were celebrated under the guidance of a phylobasileus
(tribal head) selected from the ranks of the nobles (eupatrides).

So far Grote. And Marx adds: "The savage (e. g. the Iroquois) is still
plainly visible in the Grecian gens." On further investigation we find
additional proofs of this. For the Grecian gens has also the following
attributes:

7. Paternal Lineage.

8. Prohibition of intermarrying in the gens except in the case of
heiresses. This exception formulated as a law clearly proves the
validity of the old rule. This is further substantiated by the
universally accepted custom that a woman in marrying renounced the
religious rites of her gens and accepted those of her husband's gens.
She was also registered in his phratry. According to this custom and to
a famous quotation in Dikaearchos, marriage outside of the gens was the
rule. Becker in "Charikles" directly assumes that nobody was permitted
to intermarry in the gens.

9. The right to adopt strangers in the gens. It was exercised by
adoption into the family under public formalities; but it was used
sparingly.

10. The right to elect and depose the archons. We know that every gens
had its archon. As to the heredity of the office, there is no reliable
information. Until the end of barbarism, the probability is always
against strict heredity. For it is absolutely incompatible with
conditions where rich and poor had perfectly equal rights in the gens.

Not alone Grote, but also Niebuhr, Mommsen and all other historians of
classical antiquity, were foiled by the gens. Though they chronicled
many of its distinguishing marks correctly, still they always regarded
it as a group of families and thus prevented their understanding the
nature and origin of gentes. Under the gentile constitution, the family
never was a unit of organization, nor could it be so, because man and
wife necessarily belonged to two different gentes. The gens was wholly
comprised in the phratry, the phratry in the tribe. But the family
belonged half to the gens of the man, and half to that of the woman. Nor
does the state recognize the family in public law. To this day, the
family has only a place in private law. Yet all historical records take
their departure from the absurd supposition, which was considered almost
inviolate during the eighteenth century, that the monogamous family, an
inst