THE GRECIAN GENS.
Greeks, Pelasgians and other nations of the same tribal origin were
constituted since prehistoric times on the same systematic plan as the
Americans: gens, phratry, tribe, league of tribes. The phratry might be
missing, as e. g. among the Dorians; the league of tribes might not be
fully developed in every case; but the gens was everywhere the unit. At
the time of their entrance into history, the Greeks were on the
threshold of civilization. Two full periods of evolution are stretching
between the Greeks and the above named American tribes. The Greeks of
the heroic age are by so much ahead of the Iroquois. For this reason the
Grecian gens no longer retains the archaic character of the Iroquois
gens. The stamp of group marriage is becoming rather blurred. Maternal
law had given way to paternal lineage. Rising private property had thus
made its first opening in the gentile constitution. A second opening
naturally followed the first: Paternal law being now in force, the
fortune of a wealthy heiress would have fallen to her husband in the
case of her marriage. That would have meant the transfer of her wealth
from her own gens to that of her husband. In order to avoid this, the
fundament of gentile law was shattered. In such a case, the girl was not
only permitted, but obliged to intermarry within the gens, in order to
retain the wealth in the latter.
According to Grote's History of Greece, the gens of Attica was held
together by the following bonds:
1. Common religious rites and priests installed exclusively in honor of
a certain divinity, the alleged gentile ancestor, who was designated by
a special by-name in this capacity.
2. A common burial ground. (See Demosthenes' Eubulides.)
3. Right of mutual inheritance.
4. Obligation to mutually help, protect and assist one another in case
of violence.
5. Mutual right and duty to intermarry in the gens in certain cases,
especially for orphaned girls or heiresses.
6. Possession of common property, at least in some cases, and an archon
(supervisor) and treasurer elected for this special case.
The phratry united several gentes, but rather loosely. Still we find in
it similar rights and duties, especially common religious rites and the
right of avenging the death of a phrator. Again, all the phratries 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
institution scarcely older than civilization, is the nucleus around
which society and state gradually crystallized.
"Mr. Grote will also please note," throws in Marx, "that the gentes,
which the Greeks traced to their mythologies, are older than the
mythologies. The latter together with their gods and demi-gods were
created by the gentes."
Grote is quoted with preference by Morgan as a prominent and quite
trustworthy witness. He relates that every Attic gens had a name derived
from its alleged ancestor; that before Solon's time, and even after, it
was customary for the gentiles (gennêtes) to inherit the fortunes of
their intestate deceased; and that in case of murder first the relatives
of the victim had the duty and the right to prosecute the criminal,
after them the gentiles and finally the phrators. "Whatever we may learn
about the oldest Attic laws is founded on the organization in gentes and
phratries."
The descent of the gentes from common ancestors has caused the
"schoolbred philistines," as Marx has it, much worry. Representing this
descent as purely mythical, they are at a loss to explain how the gentes
developed out of independent and wholly unrelated families. But this
explanation must be given, if they wish to explain the existence of the
gentes. They then turn around in a circle of meaningless gibberish and
do not get beyond the phrase: the pedigree is indeed a fable, but the
gens is a reality. Grote finally winds up--the parenthetical remarks are
by Marx: "We rarely hear about this pedigree, because it is used in
public only on certain very festive occasions. But the less prominent
gentes had their common religious rites (very peculiar, Mr. Grote!) and
their common superhuman ancestor and pedigree just like the more
prominent gentes (how very peculiar this, Mr. Grote, in less prominent
gentes!); and the ground plan and the ideal fundament (my dear sir! Not
ideal, but carnal, anglice "fleshly") was the same in all of them."
Marx sums up Morgan's reply to this as follows: "The system of
consanguinity corresponding to the archaic form of the gens--which the
Greeks once possessed like other mortals--preserved the knowledge of the
mutual relation of all members of the gens. They learned this important
fact by practice from early childhood. With the advent of the monogamous
family this was gradually forgotten. The gentile name created a pedigree
by the side of which that of the monogamous family seemed insignificant.
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 Grecian history. The
historical memory of the Greeks themselves does not reach beyond the
heroic age.
Closely packed in a comparatively small territory as the Greeks were,
their dialectic differences were less conspicuous than those developed
in the wide American forests. Yet even here we find only tribes of the
same main dialect united in a larger organization. Little Attica had its
own dialect which later on became the prevailing language in Grecian
prose.
In the epics of Homer we generally find the Greek tribes combined into
small nations, but so that their gentes, phratries and tribes retained
their full independence. They already lived in towns fortified by walls.
The population increased with the growth of the herds, with agriculture
and the beginnings of the handicrafts. At the same time the differences
in wealth became more marked and gave rise to an aristocratic element
within the old primordial democracy. The individual little nations
carried on an unceasing warfare for the possession of the best land and
also for the sake of looting. Slavery of the prisoners of war was
already well established.
The constitution of these tribes and nations was as follows:
1. A permanent authority was the council (bule), originally composed of
the gentile archons, but later on, when their number became too great,
recruited by selection in such a way that the aristocratic element was
developed and strengthened. Dionysios openly speaks of the council at
the time of the heroes as being composed of nobles (kratistoi). The
council had the final decision in all important matters. In Aeschylos,
e. g. the council of Thebes decides that the body of Eteokles be buried
with full honors, the body of Polynikes, however, thrown out to be
devoured by the dogs. With the rise of the state this council was
transformed into the senate.
2. The public meeting (agora). We saw how the Iroquois, men and women,
attended the council meetings, taking an orderly part in the discussions
and influencing them. Among the Homeric Greeks, this attendance had
developed to a complete public meeting. This was also the case with the
Germans of the archaic period. The meeting was called by the council.
Every man could demand the word. The final vote was taken by hand
raising (Aeschylos in "The Suppliants," 607), or by acclamation. The
decision of the meeting was supreme and final. "Whenever a matter is
discussed," says Schoemann in "Antiquities of Greece," "which requires
the participation of the people for its execution, Homer does not
indicate any means by which the people could be forced to it against
their will." It is evident that at a time when every able-bodied member
of the tribe was a warrior, there existed as yet no public power apart
from the people that might have been used against them. The primordial
democracy was still in full force, and by this standard the influence
and position of the council and of the basileus must be judged.
3. The military chief (basileus). Marx makes the following comment: "The
European scientists, mostly born servants of princes, represent the
basileus as a monarch in the modern sense. The Yankee republican Morgan
objects to this. Very ironically but truthfully he says of the oily
Gladstone and his "Juventus Mundi": 'Mr. Gladstone, who presents to his
readers the Grecian chiefs of the heroic age as kings and princes, with
the superadded qualities of gentlemen, is forced to admit that, on the
whole we seem to have the custom or law of primogeniture sufficiently,
but not oversharply defined.' As a matter of fact, Mr. Gladstone himself
must have perceived that a primogeniture resting on a clause of
'sufficient but not oversharp' definition is as bad as none at all."
We saw how the law of heredity was applied to the offices of sachems and
chiefs among the Iroquois and other Indians. All offices were subject to
the vote of the gentiles and for this reason hereditary in the gens. A
vacancy was filled preferably by the next gentile relative--the brother
or the sister's son--unless good reasons existed for passing him. That
in Greece, under paternal law, the office of basileus was generally
transmitted to the son or one of the sons, indicates only that the
probability of succession by public election was in favor of the sons.
It implies by no means a legal succession without a vote of the people.
We here perceive simply the first rudiments of segregated families of
aristocrats among Iroquois and Greeks, which led to a hereditary
leadership or monarchy in Greece. Hence the facts are in favor of the
opinion that among Greeks the basileus was either elected by the people
or at last was subject to the indorsement of their appointed organs, the
council or agora, as was the case with the Roman king (rex).
In the Iliad the ruler of men, Agamemnon, does not appear as the
supreme king of the Greeks, but as general in chief of a federal army
besieging a city. And when dissensions had broken out among the Greeks,
it is this quality which Odysseus points out in a famous passage: "Evil
is the rule of the many; let one be the ruler, one the chief" (to which
the popular verse about the scepter was added later on). Odysseus does
not lecture on the form of government, but demands obedience to the
general in chief.
Considering that the Greeks before Troy appear only in the character of
an army, the proceedings of the agora are sufficiently democratic. In
referring to presents, that is the division of the spoils, Achilles
always leaves the division, not to Agamemnon or some other basileus, but
to the "sons of the Achaeans," the people. The attributes, descendant of
Zeus, bred by Zeus, do not prove anything, because every gens is
descended from some god--the gens of the leader of the tribe from a
"prominent" god, in this case Zeus. Even those who are without personal
freedom, as the swineherd Eumaeos and others, are "divine" (dioi or
theioi), even in the Odyssey, which belongs to a much later period than
the Iliad. In the same Odyssey, the name of "heros" is given to the
herald Mulios as well as to the blind bard Demodokos. In short, the word
"basileia," with which the Greek writers designate the so-called
monarchy of Homer (because the military leadership is its distinguishing
mark, by the side of which the council and the agorâ are existing),
means simply--military democracy (Marx).
The basileus had also sacerdotal and judiciary functions beside those of
a military leader. The judiciary functions are not clearly defined, but
the functions of priesthood are due to his position of chief
representative of the tribe or of the league of tribes. There is never
any mention of civil, administrative functions. But it seems that he
was ex-officio a member of the council. The translation of basileus by
king is etymologically quite correct, because king (Kuning) is derived
from Kuni, Künne, and signifies chief of a gens. But the modern meaning
of the word king in no way designates the functions of the Grecian
basileus. Thucydides expressly refers to the old basileia as patrikê,
that is "derived from the gens," and states that it had well defined
functions. And Aristotle says that the basileia of heroic times was a
leadership of free men and that the basileus was a military chief, a
judge and a high priest. Hence the basileus had no governmental power in
a modern sense.[24]
In the Grecian constitution of heroic times, then, we still find the old
gentilism fully alive, but we also perceive the beginnings of the
elements that undermine it; paternal law and inheritance of property by
the father's children, favoring accumulation of wealth in the family and
giving to the latter a power apart from the gens; influence of the
difference of wealth on the constitution by the formation of the first
rudiments of hereditary nobility and monarchy; slavery, first limited to
prisoners of war, but already paving the way to the enslavement of
tribal and gentile associates; degeneration of the old feuds between
tribes a regular mode of existing by systematic plundering on land and
sea for the purpose of acquiring cattle, slaves, and treasures. In
short, wealth is praised and respected as the highest treasure, and the
old gentile institutions are abused in order to justify the forcible
robbery of wealth. Only one thing was missing: an institution that not
only secured the newly acquired property of private individuals against
the communistic traditions of the gens, that not only declared as sacred
the formerly so despised private property and represented the protection
of this sacred property as the highest purpose of human society, but
that also stamped the gradually developing new forms of acquiring
property, of constantly increasing wealth, with the universal sanction
of society. An institution that lent the character of perpetuity not
only to the newly rising division into classes, but also to the right of
the possessing classes to exploit and rule the non-possessing classes.
And this institution was found. The state arose.
FOOTNOTE:
[24] Author's note.
Just as the Grecian basileus, so the Aztec military chief was
misrepresented as a modern prince. Morgan was the first to submit to
historical criticism the reports of the Spaniards who first
misapprehended and exaggerated, and later on consciously misrepresented
the functions of this office. He showed that the Mexicans were in the
middle stage of barbarism, but on a higher plane than the New Mexican
Pueblo Indians, and that their constitution, so far as the garbled
accounts show, corresponded to this stage: a league of three tribes
which had made a number of others tributary and was administered by a
federal council and a federal chief of war, whom the Spaniards construed
into an "emperor."