It is of course agreed on all hands that such a system did exist in one people of ancient Italy, namely, the Etruscans. Their inscriptions, to take no other evidence, are so far legible that they show us again and again names of the form "A, son of B," where B is a feminine name; and the little which the Greeks and Romans tell us about their sociology agrees with this evidence. But the Etruscans were a peculiar people; invaders, almost certainly from the East, who came possibly as early as the eleventh century b.c., conquered some of the native tribes, profoundly influenced others, and were no doubt influenced by them, but never coalesced with them, and remained a foreign folk as long as they were a folk at all. To this day their physical characteristics are traceable in Tuscany.[1]
The other important races of the peninsula, when they emerge from the gloom of early pre-history, have at least this in common, that they speak various related dialects of an Aryan language. They have, furthermore, a fairly homogeneous culture, and very similar religious ideas. We can therefore treat them as a whole (with the exception of the invading Greeks of the colonies of Magna Graecia and such remnants as there may have been of earlier and more barbarous races) despite the fact that physically they were not a single race any more than they are to-day.[2] Hence if we find a custom existing, say, in Umbria or the Sabine highlands, it is not unfair to look for it in Rome also, where the Italian[3] civilisation found its highest expression, and where we have incomparably the richest store of documentary and monumental evidence. Also, it is principally at Rome that the supporters of the theory of mother-right find their facts.
Now it is again an uncontested fact that the Romans of
