community, something like those which
exist to-day in Russia. The political progress of primitive society
seems to have consisted largely in the coalescence of these small groups
into larger groups. The first series of compound groups resulting from
the coalescence of adjacent marks is that which was known in nearly all
Teutonic lands as the _hundred_, in Athens as the [Greek: _phratria_] or
_brotherhood_, in Rome as the _curia_. Yet alongside of the Roman group
called the _curia_ there is a group whose name, the _century_, exactly
translates the name of the Teutonic group; and, as Mr. Freeman says, it
is difficult to believe that the Roman _century_ did not at the outset
in some way correspond to the Teutonic _hundred_ as a stage in political
organization. But both these terms, as we know them in history, are
survivals from some prehistoric state of things; and whether they were
originally applied to a hundred of houses, or of families, or of
warriors, we do not know.[8] M. Geffroy, in his interesting essay on the
Germania of Tacitus, suggests that the term _canton_ may have a similar
origin.[9] The outlines of these primitive groups are, however, more
obscure than those of the more primitive mark, because in most cases
they have been either crossed and effaced or at any rate diminished in
importance by the more highly compounded groups which came next in order
of formation. Next above the _hundred_, in order of composition, comes
the group known in ancient Italy as the_pagus_, in Attika perhaps as the
_deme_, in Germany and at first in England as the _gau_ or _ga_, at a
later date in England as the _shire_. Whatever its name, this group
answers to the _tribe_ regarded as settled upon a certain determinate
territory. Just as in the earlier nomadic life the aggregation of clans
makes ultimately the tribe, so in the more advanced agricultural life of
our Aryan ancestors the aggregation of marks or village-communities
makes ultimately the _gau_ or _shire_. Properly speaking, the name
_shire_ is descriptive of division and not of aggregation; but this term
came into use in England after the historic order of formation had been
forgotten, and when the _shire_ was looked upon as a _piece_ of some
larger whole, such as the kingdom of Mercia or Wessex. Historically,
however, the _shire_ was not made, like the _departments_ of modern
France, by the division of the kingdom for administrative purposes, but
the kingdom was made by t