ificant.
This name had now the function of preserving the memory of the common
descent of its bearers. But the pedigree of the gens went so far back
that the gentiles could no longer actually ascertain their mutual
kinship, except in a limited number of more recent common ancestors. The
name itself was the proof of a common descent and sufficed always except
in cases of adoption. To actually dispute all kinship between gentiles
after the manner of Grote and Niebuhr, who thus transform the gens into
a purely hypothetical and fictitious creation of the brain, is indeed
worthy of "ideal" scientists, that is book worms. Because the relation
of the generations, especially on the advent of monogamy, is removed to
the far distance, and the reality of the past seems reflected in
phantastic imaginations, therefore the brave old philistines concluded
and conclude that the imaginary pedigree created real gentes!"

The phratry was, as among the Americans, a mother-gens comprising
several daughter gentes, and often traced them all to the same ancestor.
According to Grote "all contemporaneous members of the phratry of
Hekataeos were descendants in the sixteenth degree of one and the same
divine ancestor." All the gentes of this phratry were therefore
literally brother gentes. The phratry is mentioned by Homer as a
military unit in that famous passage where Nestor advises Agamemnon:
"Arrange the men by phratries and tribes so that phratry may assist
phratry, and tribe the tribe." The phratry has the right and the duty to
prosecute the death of a phrator, hence in former times the duty of
blood revenge. It has, furthermore, common religious rites and
festivals. As a matter of fact, the development of the entire Grecian
mythology from the traditional old Aryan cult of nature was essentially
due to the gentes and phratries and took place within them. The phratry
had an official head (phratriarchos) and also, according to De
Coulanges, meetings and binding resolutions, a jurisdiction and
administration. Even the state of a later period, while ignoring the
gens, left certain public functions to the phratry.

The tribe consisted of several kindred phratries. In Attica there were
four tribes of three phratries each; the number of gentes in each
phratry was thirty. Such an accurate division of groups reveals the fact
of a conscious and well-planned interference with the natural order.
How, when and why this was done is not disclosed by Greci