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 nations: the Warals, the
Magars and the Munnipurs. Recently it was described by M. Kovalevsky,
who discovered it among the Pshavs, Shevsurs, Svanets and other
Caucasian tribes. A few short notes about the existence of the gens
among Celts and Germans may find a place here.
The oldest Celtic laws preserved for us still show the gens in full
bloom. In Ireland, it is alive in the popular instinct to this day,
after it has been forced out of actual existence by the English. It was
in full force in Scotland until the middle of the eighteenth century,
and here it also succumbed only to the weapons, laws and courts of the
English.
The old Welsh laws, written several centuries before the English
invasion, not later than the 11th century, still show collective
agriculture of whole villages, although only exceptionally and as the
survival of a former universal custom. Every family had five acres for
its special use; another lot was at the same time cultivated
collectively and its yield divided among the different families. In view
of Irish and Scotch analogies it cannot be doubted that these village
communities represent gentes or subdivisions of gentes, even though a
repeated investigation of the Welsh laws, which I cannot undertake from
lack of time (my notes are from 1869), should not directly corroborate
this. One thing, however, is plainly proven by the Welsh and Irish laws,
namely that the pairing family had not yet given way to monogamy among
the Celts of the 11th century. In Wales, marriage did not become
indissoluble by divorce, or rather by notification, until after seven
years. Even if no more than three nights were lacking to make up the
seven years, a married couple could still separate. Their property was
divided among them: the woman made the division, the man selected his
share. The furniture was divided according to certain very funny rules.
If the marriage was dissolved by the man, he had to return the woman's
dowry and a few other articles; if the woman wished a separation, then
she received less. Of three children the man took two, the woman one,
viz., the second child. If the woman married again after her divorce,
and her first husband claimed her back, she was obliged to follow him,
even if she had one foot in her new husband's bed. But if two had lived
together for seven years, they were considered man and wife, even
without the preliminaries of a formal marriage. Chasteness of the girls
before marriage was by no means strictly observed, nor was it required.
The regulations regarding this subject are of an extremely frivolous
nature and in contradiction with civilized morals. When a woman
committed adultery, her husband had a right to beat her--this was one of
three cases when he could do so without incurring a penalty--but after
that he could not demand any other satisfaction, for "the same crime
shall either be atoned for or avenged, but not both." The reasons that
entitled a woman to a divorce without curtailing her claims to a fair
settlement were of a very diverse nature: bad breath of the man was
sufficient. The ransom to be paid to the chief or king for the right of
the first night (gobr merch, hence the medieval name marcheta, French
marquette) plays a conspicuous part in the code of laws. The women had
the right to vote in the public meetings. Add to this that similar
conditions are vouched for in Ireland; that marriage on time was also
quite the custom there, and that the women were assured of liberal and
well defined privileges in case of divorce, even to the point of
remuneration for domestic services; that a "first wife" existed by the
side of others, and that legal and illegal children without distinction
received a share of their deceased parent's property--and we have a
picture of the pairing family among the Celts. The marriage laws of the
American Indians seem strict in comparison to the Celtic, but this is
not surprising when we remember that the Celts were still living in
group marriage at Cesar's time.
The Irish gens (Sept; the tribe was called clainne, clan) is confirmed
and described not alone by the ancient law codes, but also by the
English jurists of the 17th century who were sent across for the purpose
of transforming the clan lands into royal dominions. Up to this time,
the soil had been the collective property of the gens or the clan,
except where the chiefs had already claimed it as their private
dominion. When a gentile died, and a household was thus dissolved, the
gentile chief (called caput cognationis by the English jurists) made a
new assignment of the whole gentile territory to the rest of the
household. This division of land probably took place according to such
rules as were observed in Germany. Until about fifty years ago, village
marks were quite frequent, and some of these so-called rundales may be
found to this day. The farmers of a rundale, individual tenants on the
soil that once was the collective property of the gens, but had been
confiscated by the English conquerors, each pay the rent for his
respective parcel. But they all combine their lands and parcel it off
according to situation and quality. These parcels, called "Gewanne" on
the German river Mosel, are cultivated collectively and their yield is
divided into shares. Marshland and pastures are used in common. Fifty
years ago, new divisions were still made occasionally, sometimes
annually. The field map of such a rundale village looks exactly like
that of a German "Gehöferschaft" (farming commune) on the Mosel or in
the Hochwald. The gens also survives in the "factions." The Irish
farmers often form parties that seem to be founded on absolutely
contradictory or senseless distinctions, quite incomprehensible to
Englishmen. The only purpose of these factions is apparently to rally
for the popular sport of hammering the life out of one another. They are
artificial reincarnations, modern substitutes for the dispersed gentes
that demonstrate the continuation of the old gentile instinct in their
own peculiar manner. By the way, in some localities the gentiles are
still living together on what is practically their old territory. During
the thirties, for instance, the great majority of the inhabitants of the
old county of Monaghan had only four family names, i. e., they were
descended from four gentes or tribes (clans).[27]
The downfall of the gentile order in Scotland dates from the
suppression of the revolt in 1745. What link of this order the Scotch
clan represented remains to be investigated; that it is a link, is
beyond doubt. Walter Scott's novels bring this Scotch highland clan
vividly before our eyes. It is, as Morgan says, "an excellent type of
the gens in organization and in spirit, and an extraordinary
illustration of the power of the gentile life over its members.... We
find in their feuds and blood revenge, in their localization by gentes,
in their use of lands in common, in the fidelity of the clansman to his
chief and of the members of the clan to each other, the usual and
persistent features of gentile society.... Descent was in the male line,
the children of the males remaining members of the clan, while the
children of its female members belonged to the clans of their respective
fathers." The fact that matriarchal law was formerly in force in
Scotland is proved by the royal family of the Picts, who according to
Beda observed female lineage. Even a survival of the Punaluan family had
been preserved among the Scots, as among the Welsh. For until the middle
ages, the chief of the clan or king, the last representatives of the
former common husbands, had the right to claim the first night with
every bride, unless a ransom was given.
It is an indisputable fact, that the Germans were organized in gentes
up to the time of the great migrations. The territory between the
Danube, the Rhine, the Vistula and the northern seas was evidently
occupied by them only a few centuries before Christ. The Cimbri and
Teutons were then still in full migration, and the Suebi did not settle
down until Cesar's time. Cesar expressly states that they settled down
in gentes and kins (gentibus cognatibusque), and in the mouth of a Roman
of the gens Julia this term gentibus has a definite meaning, that no
amount of disputation can obliterate. This holds good for all Germans.
It seems that even the provinces taken by them from the Romans were
settled by distribution to gentes. The Alemanian code of laws affirms
that the people settled in gentes (genealogiae) on the conquered land
south of the Danube. Genealogia is used in exactly the same sense as was
later on Mark--or Dorfgenossenschaft (mark or village community).
Kovalevsky recently maintained that these genealogiae were the great
household communities among which the land was divided, and from which
the village communities developed later on. The same may be true of the
fara, by which term the Burgundians and Langobards--a Gothic and a
Herminonian or High German tribe--designated nearly, if not exactly, the
same thing as the Alemanian genealogiae. Whether this is really the gens
or the household community, must be settled by further investigation.
The language records leave us in doubt, whether all the Germans had a
common expression for gens or not, and as to what this term was.
Etymologically, the Gothic, kuni, middle High German künne, corresponds
to the Grecian genos and the Latin gens, and is used in the same sense.
We are led back to the time of matriarchy by the terms for "woman" which
are derived from the same root: Greek gynê, Slav zenâ, Gothic qvino,
Norse kona, kuna.
Among Langobards and Burgundians, I repeat, we find the term fara which
Grimm derives from the hypothetical root fisan, to beget. I should
prefer to trace it to the more obvious root faran, German fahren, to
ride or to wander, in order to designate a certain well defined section
of the wandering corps, composed quite naturally of relatives. As a
result of centuries of wanderings from West to East and back again, this
term was gradually applied to the sex group itself.
There is furthermore the Gothic sibja, Anglosaxon sib, old High German
sippia, sippa, High German sippe. Old Norse has only the plural sifjar,
the relatives; the singular occurs only as the name of a goddess, Sif.
Finally, another expression occurs in the Hildebrand Song, where
Hildebrand asks Hadubrand "who is your father among the men of the
nation ... or what is your kin?" (eddo huêllihhes cnuosles du sîs).
If there was a common German term for gens, it was presumably the Gothic
kuni. This is not only indicated by its identity with the corresponding
term in related languages, but also by the fact that the word kuning,
German König, English king, is derived from it, all of which originally
signified chief of gens or tribe. Sibja, German Sippe (relationship),
does not appear worthy of consideration. In old Norse, at least, sifjar
signifies not alone kin by blood, but also kin through marriage; hence
it comprises the members of at least two gentes, and the term sif cannot
have been applied to the gens itself.
In the order of battle, the Germans, like the Mexicans and Greeks,
arranged the horsemen as well as the wedge-like columns of the troops on
foot by gentes. Tacitus' indefinite expression, "by families and
kinships," is explained by the fact that at his time the gens had long
ceased to be a living body in Rome.
Another passage of Tacitus is decisive. There he says: "The mother's
brother regards his nephew as his son; some even hold that the bond of
blood between the maternal uncle and the nephew is more sacred and close
than that between father and son, so that when persons are demanded as
securities, the sister's son is considered a better security than the
natural son of the man whom they desire to place under bonds." Here we
have a living proof of the matriarchal, and hence natural, gens, and it
is described as a characteristic mark of the Germans.[28] If a member of
such a gens gave his own son as a security for the fulfillment of a vow
and this son became the victim of his father's breach of faith, that was
the concern of the father alone. But when the son of a sister was
sacrificed, then the most sacred gentile law was violated. The next
relative who was bound above all others to protect the boy or young man,
was held responsible for his death; either he should not have given the
boy in bail or he should have kept the contract. If we had no other
trace of gentile law among the Germans, this one passage would be
sufficient proof of its existence.
But there is another passage in the Old Norse song of the "Dawn of the
Gods" and the "End of the World," the Völuspâ, which is still stronger
evidence, because it is 800 years younger. In this "Vision of the
Seeress," in which Bang and Bugge have now demonstrated the existence of
Christian elements, also, the description of the time of general
degeneration and corruption inaugurating the great catastrophe contains
this passage:
Broedhr munu berjask ok at bönum verdask
Munu systrungar sifjum spilla.
"Brothers will wage war against one another and become each other's
murderers, and sisters' children will break the bonds of blood."
Systrungr means the son of the mother's sister, and an abnegation of the
blood kinship from that side surpasses in the eyes of the poet even the
crime of fratricide. There is a deliberate climax in that systrungar,
emphasizing the maternal kinship. If the term syskina-börn, brother's
and sister's children, or syskina-synir, brother's and sister's sons,
had been used, there would have been a weakening of the effect, instead
of a climax. That shows that even at the time of the Vikings, when the
Völuspâ was composed, the recollection of maternal law was not yet
blotted out.
Among the Germans with whom Tacitus was familiar maternal law had
already given way to paternal lineage. The children were the next heirs
of the father; in the absence of children, the brothers and uncles on
both sides were next in line. The admission of the mother's brother to
the inheritance is a relic of maternal law and proves that paternal law
had only recently been introduced by the Germans. Traces of maternal law
were preserved until late in the middle ages. It seems that even at this
late date people still felt certain misgivings about the reliability of
fatherhood, especially among serfs. For when a feudal lord demanded the
return of a fugitive serf from a city, it was first required, for
instance in Augsburg, Basel and Kaiserslautern, that the fact of his
serfdom should be established by the oaths of six of his next blood
relations, all of whom had to belong to his mother's kin. (Maurer,
Städteverfassung, I, page 381.)
Another relic of declining matriarchy was the (from the Roman
standpoint) almost inexplicable respect of the Germans for the female
sex. Young girls of noble family were considered the safest bonds to
secure the keeping of contracts with Germans. In battle, nothing
stimulated their courage so much as the horrible thought that their
wives and daughters might be captured and carried into slavery. A woman
was to them something holy and prophetical, and they listened to her
advice in the most important matters. Veleda, the Bructerian priestess
on the river Lippe, was the soul of the insurrection of the Batavians,
in which Civilis at the head of German and Belgian tribes shook the
foundations of Roman rule in Gaul. The women held undisputed sway in the
house. If we may believe Tacitus, they, together with the old men and
children, had to do all the work, for the men went hunting, drank and
loafed. But as Tacitus does not say who cultivated the fields, and as
according to his explicit statement the slaves paid only tithes, but did
not work under compulsion, it seems that the adult men would have had to
do what little agricultural work was required.
The form of marriage, as stated above, was the pairing family in gradual
transition to monogamy. It was not yet strict monogamy, for polygamy was
permitted for the wealthy. Chasteness of the girls was in general
carefully maintained, different from the custom of the Celts. Tacitus
speaks with special ardor of the sacredness of the matrimonial bond
among the Germans. Adultery of the woman is alone quoted by him as a
reason for a divorce. But his treatment of this subject leaves many a
flaw and besides, it too openly holds up the mirror of virtue to the
dissipated Romans. So much is certain: Granted that the Germans were
such exceptional models of virtue in their forests, it required only a
short contact with the outer world to bring them down to the level of
the other average Europeans. In the whirl of Roman life the last trace
of pure morals disappeared even faster than the German language. Just
read Gregorius of Tours. It is obvious that in the primeval forests of
Germany no such hyper-refined voluptuousness could exist as in Rome.
That implies fully enough superiority of the Germans over the Roman
world, and there is no necessity for ascribing to them a moderation and
chastity that have never been the qualities of any nation as a whole.
A result of gentile law is the obligation to inherit the enmities as
well as the friendships of one's father and relatives; so is furthermore
the displacement of blood revenge by the Wergeld, a fine to be paid in
atonement of manslaughter and injuries. A generation ago this Wergeld
was considered a specifically German institution, but it has since been
found that hundreds of nations introduced this mitigation of gentile
blood revenge. Like the obligatory hospitality, it is found, for
instance, among the American Indians. Tacitus' description of the manner
in which hospitality was observed (Germania, chapt. 21) is almost
identical with Morgan's.
The hot and ceaseless controversy as to whether or not the Germans had
already made a definite repartition of the cultivated land at Tacitus'
time, and how the passages relating to this question should be
interpreted, is now a thing of the past. After the following facts had
been established: that the cultivated land of nearly all nations was
tilled collectively by the gens and later on by communistic family
groups, a practice which Cesar still found among the Suebi; that as a
result of this practice the land was re-apportioned periodically; and
that this periodical repartition of the cultivated land was preserved in
Germany down to our days--after such evidence we need not waste any more
breath on the subject. A transition within 150 years from collective
cultivation, such as Cesar expressly attributes to the Suebi, to
individual cultivation with annual repartition of the soil, such as
Tacitus found among the Germans, is surely progress enough for any one.
The further transition from this stage to complete private ownership of
land during such a short period and without any external intervention
would involve an absolute impossibility. Hence I can only read in
Tacitus what he states in so many words: They change (or re-divide) the
cultivated land every year, and enough land is left for common use. It
is the stage of agriculture and appropriation of the soil which exactly
tallies with the contemporaneous gentile constitution of the Germans.
I leave the preceding paragraph unchanged, just as it stood in former
editions. Meantime the question has assumed another aspect. Since
Kovalevsky has demonstrated that the patriarchal household community
existed nearly everywhere, perhaps even everywhere, as the connecting
link between the matriarchal communistic and the modern isolated family,
the question is no longer "Collective property or private property?" as
discussed between Maurer and Waitz, but "What was the form of that
collective property?" Not alone is there no doubt whatever, that the
Suebi were the collective owners of their land at Cesar's time, but also
that they tilled the soil collectively. The questions, whether their
economic unit was the gens, or the household, or an intermediate
communistic group, or whether all three of these groups existed at the
same time as a result of different local conditions, may remain
undecided for a long while yet. Kovalevsky maintains that the conditions
described by Tacitus were not founded on the mark or village community,
but on the household community, which developed much later into the
village community by the growth of the population.
Hence the settlements of the Germans on the territory they occupied at
the time of the Romans, and on territory later taken by them from the
Romans, would not have consisted of villages, but of large co-operative
families comprising several generations, who cultivated a sufficient
piece of land and used the surrounding wild land in common with their
neighbors. If this was the case, then the passage in Tacitus regarding
the changing of the cultivated land would indeed have an agronomic
meaning, viz., that the co-operative household cultivated a different
piece of land every year, and the land cultivated during the previous
year was left untilled or entirely abandoned. The scarcity of the
population would have left enough spare wild lands to make all dispute
about land unnecessary. Only after the lapse of centuries, when the
members of the family had increased so that the collective cultivation
became incompatible with the prevailing conditions of production, the
household communities were dissolved. The former common fields and
meadows were then divided in the well-known manner among the various
individual families that had now formed. The division of farm lands was
first periodical, but later final, while forest, pasture and
watercourses remained common property.
It seems that this process of development has been fully established for
Russia by historical investigation. As for Germany and, in the second
place, for other German countries, it cannot be denied that this view
affords in many instances a better interpretation of historical
authorities and a readier solution of difficulties than the idea of
tracing the village community to the time of Tacitus. The oldest
documents, e. g. of the Codex Laureshamensis, are easier explained by
the help of the household than of the village community. On the other
hand, new difficulties now arise and new questions pose themselves. It
will require further investigations to arrive at definite conclusions.
However, I cannot deny that the probability is very much in favor of the
intermediate stage of the household community.[29]
While the Germans of Cesar's time had either just taken up settled
abodes, or were still looking for them, they had been settled for a full
century at the time of Tacitus. As a result there is a manifest progress
in the production of necessities. The Germans lived in block houses;
their clothing was still as primitive as their forests, consisting of
rough woolen cloaks, animal skins and linen underclothing for the women
and the wealthy. They lived on milk, meat, wild fruit and, as Pliny
adds, oatmeal porridge which is the Celtic national dish in Ireland and
Scotland to-day. Their wealth consisted in cattle of an inferior race.
The kine were small, of unattractive appearance and without horns; the
horses, little ponies, were not fast runners. Money, Roman coin only,
was rarely used. They did not make ornaments of gold and silver, nor did
they value these metals. Iron was scarce and, at least among the tribes
on the Rhine and the Danube, was apparently only imported, not mined by
themselves. The Runen script (imitations of Greek and Latin letters) was
only used as a cipher and exclusively for religious sorcery. Human
sacrifices were still in vogue. In short, they were a nation just
emerged out of the middle stage of barbarism into the upper stage. But
while the tribes whose immediate contact with the Romans facilitated the
import of Roman products, were thereby prevented from acquiring a metal
and textile industry of their own, there is not the least doubt that the
tribes of the Northeast, on the Baltic, developed these industries. The
pieces of armor found in the bogs of Sleswick--a long iron sword, a coat
of mail, a silver helmet, etc., together with Roman coins from the close
of the second century--, and the German metal ware spread by the
migrations represent a peculiar type of a superior finish, even such as
were modeled after Roman originals. With the exception of England, the
emigration into the civilized Roman empire everywhere put an end to this
home industry. How simultaneously this industry arose and developed, is
shown e. g. by the bronze spangles. The specimens found in Burgundy, in
Roumania and on the Sea of Asow, might have been manufactured in the
same shop with those found in England or Sweden and are of undoubted
German origin.
The German constitution was also in keeping with the upper stage of
barbarism. According to Tacitus, the council of chiefs (principes)
universally decided matters of minor importance and prepared important
matters for the decision of the public meetings. So far as we know
anything of the public meeting in the lower stage of barbarism, viz.,
among the American Indians, it was only held by gentes, not by tribes or
leagues of tribes. The chiefs of peace (principes) were still sharply
distinguished from the chiefs of war (duces), just as among the
Iroquois. The peace chiefs were already living in part on honorary
donations of the gentiles, such as cattle, grain, etc. They were
generally elected from the same family, analogous to America. The
transition to paternal law favored, as in Greece and Rome, the gradual
transformation of office by election into hereditary office. A "noble"
family was thus gradually raised in each gens. Most of this hereditary
nobility came to grief during the migrations or shortly after. The
military leaders were elected solely on their merits. They had little
power and were obliged to rely on the force of their example. The actual
disciplinary power in the army was held by the priests, as Tacitus
implicitly states. The public meeting was the real executive. The king
or chief of the tribe presided. The people decided. A murmur signified
"No," acclamation and clanging of weapons meant "Yes." The public
meeting was at the same time a court of justice. Complaints were here
brought forth and decided, and death sentences pronounced. Only
cowardice, treason and unnatural lust were capital crimes. The gentes
and other subdivisions decided in a body under the chairmanship of the
chief, who in all original German courts was only the manager of the
transactions and questioner. Among Germans, the sentence has ever and
everywhere been pronounced by the community.
Leagues of tribes came into existence since Cesar's time. Some of them
already had kings. The first chief of war began to covet the usurper's
place, as among Greeks and Romans, and sometimes succeeded in obtaining
it. Such successful usurpers were by no means absolute rulers. But still
they began to break through the bonds of the gens. While freed slaves
generally occupied an inferior position, because they could not be
members of any gens, they often gained rank, wealth and honors as
favorites of the new kings. The same thing took place after the conquest
of the Roman empire by those military leaders who had now become kings
of great countries. Among the Frankons, slaves and freed slaves of the
king played a leading role first at the court, then in the state. A
large part of the new nobility were descended from them.
There was one institution that especially favored the rise of royalty:
the military following. We have already seen, how among the American
redskins private war groups were formed independently of the gens. Among
the Germans, these private groups had developed into standing bodies.
The military leader who had acquired fame, gathered around his person a
host of booty loving young warriors. They were pledged to personal
faithfulness by their leader who in return pledged himself to them. He
fed them, gave them presents and organized them on hierarchic
principles: a body guard and a troop for immediate emergencies and short
expeditions, a trained corps of officers for larger enterprises. These
followings must have been rather insignificant, in fact we find them so
later under Odoaker in Italy, still they portended the decay of the old
gentile liberty, and the events during and after the migrations proved
that military retainers were heralds of evil. For in the first place,
they fostered the growth of royalty. In the second place, Tacitus
affirms that they could only be held together by continual warfare and
plundering expeditions. Robbery became their life purpose. If the leader
found nothing to do in his neighborhood, he marched his troops to other
countries, where a prospect of war and booty allured him. The German
auxiliaries, many of whom fought under the Roman standard even against
Germans, had been largely recruited among such followings. They
represent the first germs of the "Landsknecht" profession, the shame and
curse of the Germans. After the conquest of the Roman empire, these
retainers of kings together with the unfree Roman courtiers formed the
other half of the nobility of later days.
In general, then, the German tribes combined into nations had the same
constitution that had developed among the Greeks of the heroic era and
the Romans at the time of the so-called kings: public meetings, councils
of gentile chiefs and military leaders who coveted actual royal power.
It was the highest constitution which the gentile order could produce;
it was the standard constitution of the higher stage of barbarism. If
society passed the limits for which this constitution sufficed, then the
end of the gentile order had come. It collapsed and the state took its
place.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Author's note to the fourth edition.
During a few days passed in Ireland, I once more became conscious to
what extent the rural population is still living in the conceptions of
the gentile period. The great landholder, whose tenant the farmer is,
still enjoys a position similar to that of a clan chief, who has to
supervise the cultivation of the soil in the interest of all, who is
entitled to a tribute from the farmer in the form of rent, but who also
has to assist the farmer in cases of need. Likewise everyone in
comfortable circumstances is considered under obligation to help his
poorer neighbors whenever they are in need. Such assistance is not
charity, it is simply the prerogative of the poor gentile, which the
rich gentile or the chief of the clan must respect. This explains why
the professors of political economy and the jurists complain of the
impossibility of imparting the idea of the modern private property to
the Irish farmers. Property that has only rights, but no duties, is
absolutely beyond the ken of the Irishman. No wonder that so many
Irishmen who are suddenly cast into one of the modern great cities of
England and America, among a population with entirely different moral
and legal standards, despair of all morals and justice, lose all hold
and become an easy prey to demoralization.
[28] Author's note.
The Greeks know this special sacredness of the bond between the mother's
brother and his nephew, a relic of maternal law found among many
nations, only in the mythology of heroic times. According to Diodorus
IV., 34, Meleagros kills the sons of Thestius, the brother of his mother
Althaia. The latter regards this deed as such a heinous crime that she
curses the murderer, her own son, and prays for his death. "It is said
that the gods fulfilled her wish and ended the life of Meleagros."
According to the same Diordorus, IV., 44, the Argonauts under Herakles
land in Thracia and there find that Phineus, at the instigation of his
second wife, shamefully maltreats his two sons, the offspring of his
first deserted wife, the Boread Kleopatra. But among the Argonauts there
are also some Boreads, the brothers of Kleopatra, the uncles of the
maltreated boys. They at once champion their nephews, set them free and
kill their guards.
[29] Translator's note.
The household community is still a distinct stage of production in
Georgia (South Russia). The northern boundary of Georgia is the
Caucasus. The Georgians, a people of high intelligence, have for
centuries maintained their independence against Persians, Arabs, Turcs
and Tartars. Dr. Philipp Gogitshayshvili gives the following interesting
description of their condition in an article, entitled "Das Gewerbe in
Georgien" (Zeitschrift für die gesammte Staatswissenschaft,
Ergänzungsheft I., Tübingen, 1901). "The Swanians (a district of Georgia
is called Swania) have all the necessities of life. They weave their own
clothing, make their own weapons, powder and even silver, and gold
ornaments. There is no modern trading.... They are acquainted with
exchange, but only of products for products. Money does not circulate
and there are neither shops nor markets.... There is not a single
beggar, not a single man who asks for charity. With the exception of
iron, salt and chintz, the Swanians produce all they need themselves.
They prepare their linen from hemp, their clothing from skins of wild
animals and wool, their footwear from hides and leather. They make
feltcaps, household goods, weapons, saddles, bridles and agricultural
implements."