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:

[25] Translator's note.

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 na