GENS. According to the traditional accounts of the old Roman
constitution, the _Gentes_ were subdivisions of the _curiae_, just
as the _curiae_ were subdivisions of the three ancient tribes, the
_Ramnes_, _Titienses_, and _Luceres_. There were ten gentes in
each curia, and consequently one hundred gentes in each tribe, and
three hundred in the three tribes. Now if there is any truth in
the tradition of this original distribution of the population into
tribes, curiae, and gentes, it follows that there was no necessary
kinship among those families which belonged to a gens, any more than
among those families which belonged to one curia. The name of the
gens was always characterised by the termination _ia_, as Julia,
Cornelia, Valeria; and the gentiles, or members of a gens, all bore
the name of the gens to which they belonged. As the gentes were
subdivisions of the three ancient tribes, the populus (in the ancient
sense) alone had gentes, so that to be a patrician and to have a gens
were synonymous; and thus we find the expressions gens and patricii
constantly united. Yet it appears that some gentes contained plebeian
familiae, which it is conjectured had their origin in marriages
between patricians and plebeians before there was connubium between
them. A hundred new members were added to the senate by the first
Tarquin. These were the representatives of the _Luceres_, the third
and inferior tribe; which is indicated by the gentes of this tribe
being called _minores_, by way of being distinguished from the older
gentes, _majores_, of the Ramnes and Tities, a distinction which
appears to have been more than nominal. [SENATUS.] There were certain
sacred rites (_sacra gentilitia_) which belonged to a gens, to which
all the members of a gens, as such, were bound. It was the duty of
the pontifices to look after the due observance of these gentile
sacra, and to see that they were not lost. Each gens seems to have
had its peculiar place (_sacellum_) for the celebration of these
sacra, which were performed at stated times. By the law of the Twelve
Tables the property of a person who died intestate devolved upon the
gens to which he belonged.