all, but simply carries off his bride (Jason, Perseus; the latter leaves his first-born son with Kepheus).[1] Never, so far as I know, does anyone inherit from his mother's brother to the exclusion of his cousins, which is the typical matrilinear inheritance; while one hero at least, Meleager, kills his maternal uncles without anyone save his mother feeling any particular abhorrence of the deed.
One instance of the relations between son-in-law and father-in-law is especially interesting. Of the murder of Deïoneus by Ixion Pindar says (Pythagoras, II, 32) ἐμφύλιον αἷμα πρῶτος οὐκ ἄτερ τέχνας ἐπέμιξε θνατοῖς ("he was the first who, by his craft, brought kinsman-slaughter among mortals"). How could this be so on any system of family organization? The only explanation which seems at all likely,—since marriage never takes a man out of his clan,—is that Deïoneus was his blood-relation. I.e., the legend indicates, if anything, endogamy, and therefore presumably father-right.
Clan organization.
What is the meaning of the elaborate division of the Athenians and their Ionian kinsmen into Geleontes, Hopletes, Aigikoreis, and Argadeis, and the further Attic subdivisions[2] into 12 phratries and 360 gentes? Is this a Greek equivalent of the Australian four-class exogamous system, (a system of 360, or even 12, classes is hardly likely!)? Are the three Dorian tribes (Ḥylleis, Pamphyli, Dymanes) a similar arrangement of the less common odd- numbered type? So far as I know there is not a shred of material for an affirmative answer; we hear of the ἀγχιστεὺς
- ↑ Apollodoros, II., iv., 2. Kepheus had no heirs male, and by Greek ideas would naturally want to retain a θυγατριδοῦς ("daughter's son") in their stead. I suggest that, when the kingdom is inherited, it is because the princess is what Attic law called an ἐπίκληρος, i.e. a woman whom the heir was obliged to marry (vid. inf.).
- ↑ Pollux, viii., III.
