CHANGE OF DESCENT FROM THE FEMALE TO THE MALE LINE.
HOW THE CHANGE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE.—INHERITANCE OF
PROPERTY THE MOTIVE.—DESCENT IN THE FEMALE LINE AMONG THE
LYCIANS.—THE CRETANS.—THE ETRUSCANS.—PROBABLY AMONG THE
ATHENIANS IN THE TIME OF CECROPS.—THE HUNDRED FAMILIES OF
THE LOCRIANS.—EVIDENCE FROM MARRIAGES.—TURANIAN SYSTEM OF
CONSANGUINITY AMONG GRECIAN TRIBES.—LEGEND OF THE DANAIDÆ.
An important question remains to be considered, namely: whether any
evidence exists that descent was anciently in the female line in the
Grecian and Latin gentes. Theoretically, this must have been the fact
at some anterior period among their remote ancestors; but we are not
compelled to rest the question upon theory alone. Since a change to
the male line involved a nearly total alteration of the membership in
a gens, a method by which it might have been accomplished should be
pointed out. More than this, it should be shown, if possible, that an
adequate motive requiring the change was certain to arise, with the
progress of society out of the condition in which this form of descent
originated. And lastly, the existing evidence of ancient descent in the
female line among them should be presented.
A gens in the archaic period, as we have seen, consisted of a supposed
female ancestor and her children, together with the children of her
daughters, and of her female descendants through females in perpetuity.
The children of her sons, and of her male descendants, through males,
were excluded. On the other hand, with descent in the male line, a
gens consisted of a supposed male ancestor and his children, together
with the children of his sons and of his male descendants through
males in perpetuity. The children of his daughters, and of his female
descendants, through females, were excluded. Those excluded in the
first case would be members of the gens in the second case, and _vice
versâ_. The question then arises, how could descent be changed from the
female line to the male without the destruction of the gens?
The method was simple and natural, provided the motive to make the
change was general, urgent and commanding. When done at a given time,
and by preconcerted determination, it was only necessary to agree that
all the present members of the gens should remain members, but that in
future all children, whose fathers belonged to the gens, should alone
remain in it and bear the gentile name, while the children of its
female members should be excluded. This would not break or change the
kinship or relations of the existing gentiles; but thereafter it would
retain in the gens the children it before excluded, and exclude those
it before retained. Although it may seem a hard problem to solve, the
pressure of an adequate motive would render it easy, and the lapse of
a few generations would make it complete. As a practical question, it
has been changed from the female line to the male among the American
aborigines in a number of instances. Thus, among the Ojibwas descent is
now in the male line, while among their congeners, the Delawares and
Mohegans, it is still in the female line. Originally, without a doubt,
descent was in the female line in the entire Algonkin stock.
Since descent in the female line is archaic, and more in accordance
with the early condition of ancient society than descent in the male
line, there is a presumption in favor of its ancient prevalence in
the Grecian and Latin gentes. Moreover, when the archaic form of any
transmitted organization has been discovered and verified, it is
impossible to conceive of its origination in the later more advanced
form.
Assuming a change of descent among them from the female line to
the male, it must have occurred very remotely from the historical
period. Their history in the Middle Status of barbarism is entirely
lost, except it has been in some measure preserved in their arts,
institutions and inventions, and in improvements in language. The
Upper Status has the superadded light of tradition and of the Homeric
poems to acquaint us with its experience and the measure of progress
then made. But judging from the condition in which their traditions
place them, it seems probable that descent in the female line had not
entirely disappeared, at least among the Pelasgian and Grecian tribes,
when they entered the Upper Status of barbarism.
When descent was in the female line in the Grecian and Latin gentes,
the gens possessed the following among other characteristics: 1.
Marriage in the gens was prohibited; thus placing children in a
different gens from that of their reputed father. 2. Property and the
office of chief were hereditary in the gens; thus excluding children
from inheriting the property or succeeding to the office of their
reputed father. This state of things would continue until a motive
arose sufficiently general and commanding to establish the injustice of
this exclusion in the face of their changed condition.
The natural remedy was a change of descent from the female line to
the male. All that was needed to effect the change was an adequate
motive. After domestic animals began to be reared in flocks and
herds, becoming thereby a source of subsistence as well as objects
of individual property, and after tillage had led to the ownership
of houses and lands in severalty, an antagonism would be certain to
arise against the prevailing form of gentile inheritance, because
it excluded the owner’s children, whose paternity was becoming more
assured, and gave his property to his gentile kindred. A contest for
a new rule of inheritance, shared in by fathers and their children,
would furnish a motive sufficiently powerful to effect the change. With
property accumulating in masses and assuming permanent forms, and with
an increased proportion of it held by individual ownership, descent in
the female line was certain of overthrow, and the substitution of the
male line equally assured. Such a change would leave the inheritance
in the gens as before, but it would place children in the gens of
their father, and at the head of the agnatic kindred. For a time, in
all probability, they would share in the distribution of the estate
with the remaining agnates; but an extension of the principle by which
the agnates cut off the remaining gentiles, would in time result in
the exclusion of the agnates beyond the children and an exclusive
inheritance in the children. Farther than this, the son would now be
brought in the line of succession to the office of his father.
Such had the law of inheritance become in the Athenian gens in the
time of Solon or shortly after; when the property passed to the sons
equally, subject to the obligation of maintaining the daughters, and of
apportioning them in marriage; and in default of sons, to the daughters
equally. If there were no children, then the inheritance passed to the
agnatic kindred, and in default of the latter, to the gentiles. The
Roman law of the Twelve Tables was substantially the same.
It seems probable further, that when descent was changed to the male
line, or still earlier, animal names for the gentes were laid aside
and personal names substituted in their place. The individuality
of persons would assert itself more and more with the progress of
society, and with the increase and individual ownership of property,
leading to the naming of the gens after some ancestral hero. Although
new gentes were being formed from time to time by the process of
segmentation, and others were dying out, the lineage of a gens reached
back through hundreds not to say thousands of years. After the supposed
substitution, the eponymous ancestor would have been a shifting person,
at long intervals of time, some later person distinguished in the
history of the gens being put in his place, when the knowledge of the
former person became obscured, and faded from view in the misty past.
That the more celebrated Grecian gentes made the change of names,
and made it gracefully, is shown by the fact, that they retained the
name of the mother of their gentile father, and ascribed his birth to
her embracement by some particular god. Thus Eumolpus, the eponymous
ancestor of the Attic Eumolpidæ, was the reputed son of Neptune and
Chione; but even the Grecian gens was older than the conception of
Neptune.
Recurring now to the main question, the absence of direct proof of
ancient descent in the female line in the Grecian and Latin gentes
would not silence the presumption in its favor; but it so happens that
this form of descent remained in some tribes nearly related to the
Greeks with traces of it in a number of Grecian tribes.
The inquisitive and observing Herodotus found one nation, the Lycians,
Pelasgian in lineage, but Grecian in affiliation, among whom in his
time (440 B. C.), descent was in the female line. After remarking that
the Lycians were sprung from Crete, and stating some particulars of
their migration to Lycia under Sarpedon, he proceeds as follows: “Their
customs are partly Cretan and partly Carian. They have, however, one
singular custom in which they differ from every other nation in the
world. Ask a Lycian who he is, and he answers by giving his own name,
that of his mother, and so on in the female line. Moreover, if a free
woman marry a man who is a slave, their children are free citizens;
but if a free man marry a foreign woman, or cohabit with a concubine,
even though he be the first person in the state, the children forfeit
all the rights of citizenship.”[393] It follows necessarily from this
circumstantial statement that the Lycians were organized in gentes,
with a prohibition against intermarriage in the gens, and that the
children belonged to the gens of their mother. It presents a clear
exemplification of a gens in the archaic form, with confirmatory tests
of the consequences of a marriage of a Lycian man with a foreign woman,
and of a Lycian woman with a slave.[394] The aborigines of Crete
were Pelasgian, Hellenic and Semitic tribes, living locally apart.
Minos, the brother of Sarpedon, is usually regarded as the head of the
Pelasgians in Crete; but the Lycians were already Hellenized in the
time of Herodotus and quite conspicuous among the Asiatic Greeks for
their advancement. The insulation of their ancestors upon the island of
Crete, prior to their migration in the legendary period to Lycia, may
afford an explanation of their retention of descent in the female line
to this late period.
Among the Etruscans also the same rule of descent prevailed. “It is
singular enough,” observes Cramer, “that two customs peculiar to the
Etruscans, as we discover from their monuments, should have been
noticed by Herodotus as characteristic of the Lycians and Caunians
of Asia Minor. The first is, that the Etruscans invariably describe
their parentage and family with reference to the mother, and not the
father. The other, that they admitted their wives to their feasts and
banquets.”[395]
Curtius comments on Lycian, Etruscan and Cretan descent in the female
line in the following language: “It would be an error to understand
the usage in question as an homage to the female sex. It is rather
rooted in primitive conditions of society, in which monogamy was not
yet established with sufficient certainty to enable descent upon the
father’s side to be affirmed with assurance. Accordingly the usage
extends far beyond the territory commanded by the Lycian nationality.
It occurs, even to this day, in India; it may be demonstrated to have
existed among the ancient Egyptians; it is mentioned by Sanchoniathon
(p. 16, Orell), where the reasons for its existence are stated with
great freedom; and beyond the confines of the East it appears among the
Etruscans, among the Cretans, who were so closely connected with the
Lycians, and who called their father-land mother-land; and among the
Athenians, consult Bachofen, etc. Accordingly, if Herodotus regards the
usage in question as thoroughly peculiar to the Lycians, it must have
maintained itself longest among them of all the nations related to the
Greeks, as is also proved by the Lycian inscriptions. Hence we must in
general regard the employment of the maternal name for a designation
of descent as the remains of an imperfect condition of social life and
family law, which, as life becomes more regulated, was relinquished in
favor of usages, afterwards universal in Greece, of naming children
after the father. This diversity of usages, which is extremely
important for the history of ancient civilization, has been recently
discussed by Bachofen in his address above named.”[396]
In a work of vast research, Bachofen has collected and discussed
the evidence of female authority (mother-right) and of female rule
(gyneocracy) among the Lycians, Cretans, Athenians, Lemnians,
Ægyptians, Orchomenians, Locrians, Lesbians, Mantineans, and among
eastern Asiatic nations.[397] The condition of ancient society, thus
brought under review, requires for its full explanation the existence
of the gens in its archaic form as the source of the phenomena. This
would bring the mother and her children into the same gens, and in the
composition of the communal household, on the basis of gens, would
give the gens of the mothers the ascendency in the household. The
family, which had probably attained the syndyasmian form, was still
environed with the remains of that conjugal system which belonged to a
still earlier condition. Such a family, consisting of a married pair
with their children, would naturally have sought shelter with kindred
families in a communal household, in which the several mothers and
their children would be of the same gens, and the reputed fathers
of these children would be of other gentes. Common lands and joint
tillage would lead to joint-tenement houses and communism in living;
so that gyneocracy seems to require for its creation, descent in the
female line. Women thus entrenched in large households, supplied from
common stores, in which their own gens so largely predominated in
numbers, would produce the phenomena of mother right and gyneocracy,
which Bachofen has detected and traced with the aid of fragments of
history and of tradition. Elsewhere I have referred to the unfavorable
influence upon the position of women which was produced by a change
of descent from the female line to the male, and by the rise of the
monogamian family, which displaced the joint-tenement house, and in
the midst of a society purely gentile, placed the wife and mother in a
single house and separated her from her gentile kindred.[398]
Monogamy was not probably established among the Grecian tribes until
after they had attained the Upper Status of barbarism; and we seem to
arrive at chaos in the marriage relation within this period, especially
in the Athenian tribes. Concerning the latter, Bachofen remarks: “For
before the time of Cecrops the children, as we have seen, had only a
mother, no father; they were of one line. Bound to no man exclusively,
the woman brought only spurious children into the world. Cecrops first
made an end of this condition of things; led the lawless union of the
sexes back to the exclusiveness of marriage; gave to the children a
father and mother, and thus from being of one line (_unilateres_) made
them of two lines (_bilateres_).”[399] What is here described as the
lawless union of the sexes must be received with modifications. We
should expect at that comparatively late day to find the syndyasmian
family, but attended by the remains of an anterior conjugal system
which sprang from marriages in the group. The punaluan family, which
the statement fairly implies, must have disappeared before they
reached the ethnical period named. This subject will be considered in
subsequent chapters in connection with the growth of the family.
There is an interesting reference by Polybius to the hundred families
of the Locrians of Italy. “The Locrians themselves,” he remarks,
“have assured me that their own traditions are more conformable to the
account of Aristotle than to that of Timæus. Of this they mention the
following proofs. The first is, that all nobility of ancestry among
them is derived from women, and not from men. That those, for example,
alone are noble, who derive their origin from the hundred families.
That these families were noble among the Locrians before they migrated;
and were the same, indeed, from which a hundred virgins were taken by
lot, as the oracle had commanded, and were sent to Troy.”[400] It is
at least a reasonable supposition that the rank here referred to was
connected with the office of chief of the gens, which ennobled the
particular family within the gens, upon one of the members of which it
was conferred. If this supposition is tenable, it implies descent in
the female line both as to persons and to office. The office of chief
was hereditary in the gens, and elective among its male members in
archaic times; and with descent in the female line, it would pass from
brother to brother, and from uncle to nephew. But the office in each
case passed through females, the eligibility of the person depending
upon the gens of his mother, who gave him his connection with the gens,
and with the deceased chief whose place was to be filled. Wherever
office or rank runs through females, it requires descent in the female
line for its explanation.
Evidence of ancient descent in the female line among the Grecian tribes
is found in particular marriages which occurred in the traditionary
period. Thus Salmōneus and Krētheus were own brothers, the sons
of Æolus. The former gave his daughter Tyrō in marriage to her
uncle. With descent in the male line, Krētheus and Tyrō would
have been of the same gens, and could not have married for that reason;
but with descent in the female line, they would have been of different
gentes, and therefore not of gentile kin. Their marriage in that case
would not have violated strict gentile usages. It is immaterial that
the persons named are mythical, because the legend would apply gentile
usages correctly. This marriage is explainable on the hypothesis of
descent in the female line, which in turn raises a presumption of its
existence at the time, or as justified by their ancient usages which
had not wholly died out.
The same fact is revealed by marriages within the historical period,
when an ancient practice seems to have survived the change of descent
to the male line, even though it violated the gentile obligations
of the parties. After the time of Solon a brother might marry his
half-sister, provided they were born of different mothers, but not
conversely. With descent in the female line, they would be of different
gentes, and, therefore, not of gentile kin. Their marriage would
interfere with no gentile obligation. But with descent in the male
line, which was the fact when the cases about to be cited occurred,
they would be of the same gens, and consequently under prohibition.
Cimon married his half-sister, Elpinice, their father being the same,
but their mothers different. In the _Eubulides_ of Demosthenes we find
a similar case. “My grandfather,” says Euxithius, “married his sister,
she not being his sister by the same mother.”[401] Such marriages,
against which a strong prejudice had arisen among the Athenians as
early as the time of Solon, are explainable as a survival of an ancient
custom with respect to marriage, which prevailed when descent was in
the female line, and which had not been entirely eradicated in the time
of Demosthenes.
Descent in the female line presupposes the gens to distinguish
the lineage. With our present knowledge of the ancient and modern
prevalence of the gentile organization upon five continents, including
the Australian, and of the archaic constitution of the gens, traces of
descent in the female line might be expected to exist in traditions, if
not in usages coming down to historical times. It is not supposable,
therefore, that the Lycians, the Cretans, the Athenians and the
Locrians, if the evidence is sufficient to include the last two,
invented a usage so remarkable as descent in the female line. The
hypothesis that it was the ancient law of the Latin, Grecian, and other
Græco-Italian gentes affords a more rational as well as satisfactory
explanation of the facts. The influence of property and the desire to
transmit it to children furnished adequate motives for the change to
the male line.
It may be inferred that marrying out of the gens was the rule among
the Athenians, before as well as after the time of Solon, from the
custom of registering the wife, upon her marriage, in the phratry of
her husband, and the children, daughters as well as sons, in the gens
and phratry of their father.[402] The fundamental principle on which
the gens was founded was the prohibition of intermarriage among its
members as consanguinei. In each gens the number of members was not
large. Assuming sixty thousand as the number of registered Athenians in
the time of Solon, and dividing them equally among the three hundred
and sixty Attic gentes, it would give but one hundred and sixty persons
to each gens. The gens was a great family of kindred persons, with
common religious rites, a common burial place, and, in general, common
lands. From the theory of its constitution, intermarriage would be
disallowed. With the change of descent to the male line, with the rise
of monogamy and an exclusive inheritance in the children, and with the
appearance of heiresses, the way was being gradually prepared for free
marriage regardless of gens, but with a prohibition limited to certain
degrees of near consanguinity. Marriages in the human family began in
the group, all the males and females of which, excluding the children,
were joint husbands and wives; but the husbands and wives were of
different gentes; and it ended in marriage between single pairs, with
an exclusive cohabitation. In subsequent chapters an attempt will be
made to trace the several forms of marriage and of the family from the
first stage to the last.
A system of consanguinity came in with the gens, distinguished as the
Turanian in Asia, and as the Ganowánian in America, which extended the
prohibition of intermarriage as far as the relationship of brother and
sister extended among collaterals. This system still prevails among the
American aborigines, in portions of Asia and Africa, and in Australia.
It unquestionably prevailed among the Grecian and Latin tribes in
the same anterior period, and traces of it remained down to the
traditionary period. One feature of the Turanian system may be restated
as follows: the children of brothers are themselves brothers and
sisters, and as such could not intermarry; the children of sisters
stood in the same relationship, and were under the same prohibition. It
may serve to explain the celebrated legend of the Danaidæ, one version
of which furnished to Aeschylus his subject for the tragedy of the
_Suppliants_. The reader will remember that Danaus and Ægyptus were
brothers, and descendants of Argive Io. The former by different wives
had fifty daughters, and the latter by different wives had fifty sons;
and in due time the sons of Ægyptus sought the daughters of Danaus
in marriage. Under the system of consanguinity appertaining to the
gens in its archaic form, and which remained until superseded by the
system introduced by monogamy, they were brothers and sisters, and for
that reason could not marry. If descent at the time was in the male
line, the children of Danaus and Ægyptus would have been of the same
gens, which would have interposed an additional objection to their
marriage, and of equal weight. Nevertheless the sons of Ægyptus sought
to overstep these barriers and enforce wedlock upon the Danaidæ; whilst
the latter, crossing the sea, fled from Egypt to Argos to escape what
they pronounced an unlawful and incestuous union. In the _Prometheus_
of the same author, this event is foretold to Io by Prometheus, namely:
that in the fifth generation from her future son Epaphus, a band of
fifty virgins should come to Argos, not voluntarily, but fleeing from
incestuous wedlock with the sons of Ægyptus.[403] Their flight with
abhorrence from the proposed nuptials finds its explanation in the
ancient system of consanguinity, independently of gentile law. Apart
from this explanation the event has no significance, and their aversion
to the marriages would have been mere prudery.
The tragedy of the _Suppliants_ is founded upon the incident of their
flight over the sea to Argos, to claim the protection of their Argive
kindred against the proposed violence of the sons of Ægyptus, who
pursued them. At Argos the Danaidæ declare that they did not depart
from Egypt under the sentence of banishment, but fled from men of
common descent with themselves, scorning unholy marriage with the sons
of Ægyptus.[404] Their reluctance is placed exclusively upon the fact
of kin, thus implying an existing prohibition against such marriages,
which they had been trained to respect. After hearing the case of the
Suppliants, the Argives in council resolved to afford them protection,
which of itself implies the existence of the prohibition of the
marriages and the validity of their objection. At the time this tragedy
was produced, Athenian law permitted and even required marriage between
the children of brothers in the case of heiresses and female orphans,
although the rule seems to have been confined to these exceptional
cases; such marriages, therefore, would not seem to the Athenians
either incestuous or unlawful; but this tradition of the Danaidæ had
come down from a remote antiquity, and its whole significance depended
upon the force of the custom forbidding the nuptials. The turning-point
of the tradition and its incidents was their inveterate repugnance
to the proposed marriages as forbidden by law and custom. No other
reason is assigned, and no other is needed. At the same time their
conduct is intelligible on the assumption that such marriages were as
unpermissible then, as marriage between a brother and sister would
be at the present time. The attempt of the sons of Ægyptus to break
through the barrier interposed by the Turanian system of consanguinity
may mark the time when this system was beginning to give way, and the
present system, which came in with monogamy, was beginning to assert
itself, and which was destined to set aside gentile usages and Turanian
consanguinity by the substitution of fixed degrees as the limits of
prohibition.
Upon the evidence adduced it seems probable that among the Pelasgian,
Hellenic and Italian tribes descent was originally in the female line,
from which, under the influence of property and inheritance, it
was changed to the male line. Whether or not these tribes anciently
possessed the Turanian system of consanguinity, the reader will be
better able to judge after that system has been presented, with the
evidence of its wide prevalence in ancient society.
The length of the traditionary period of these tribes is of course
unknown in the years of its duration, but it must be measured by
thousands of years. It probably reached back of the invention of the
process of smelting iron ore, and if so, passed through the Later
Period of barbarism and entered the Middle Period. Their condition
of advancement in the Middle Period must have at least equaled that
of the Aztecs, Mayas and Peruvians, who were found in the status of
the Middle Period; and their condition in the Later Period must have
surpassed immensely that of the Indian tribes named. The vast and
varied experience of these European tribes in the two great ethnical
periods named, during which they achieved the remaining elements
of civilization, is entirely lost, excepting as it is imperfectly
disclosed in their traditions, and more fully by their acts of life,
their customs, language and institutions, as revealed to us by the
poems of Homer. Empires and kingdoms were necessarily unknown in these
periods; but tribes and inconsiderable nations, city and village life,
the growth and development of the arts of life, and physical, mental
and moral improvement, were among the particulars of that progress. The
loss of the events of these great periods to human knowledge was much
greater than can easily be imagined.