COMMON DIVINE ANCESTOR OF TI1K GKNS. 59 grandfather, but from the same divine or heroic ancestor : all the contemporary members of the phratry of Hekatrcus had a common god for their ancestor in the sixteenth degree ; and this fundamental belief, into which the Greek mind passed with sc much facility, was adopted and converted by positive compact into the gentile and phratric principle of union. It is because such a transfusion, not recognized by Christianity, is at va- riance with modern habits of thought, and because we do not readily understand how such a legal and religious fiction can have sunk deep into the Greek feelings, that the phratries and gentes appear to us mysterious : but they are in harmony with all the legendary genealogies which have been set forth in the preceding volume. Doubtless Niebuhr, in his valuable discus- sion of the ancient Roman gentes, is right in supposing that they were not real families, procreated from any common historical an- cestor : but it is not the less true, though he seems to suppose other- wise, that the idea of the gens involved the belief in a common first father, divine or heroic, a genealogy which we may properly call fabulous, but which was consecrated and accredited among the members of the gens itself, and served as one important bond of union between them. 1 And though an analytical mind 1 Niebuhr, Romische Gcschichte, vol. i, pp. 317-337. Varro's language on that point is clear: "Ut in hominibus quaedam sunt cognationes et gcn- tilitates, sic in verbis. Ut enim ab -ZEmilio homines orti JEmilii et gentiles, sic ab JEmilii nomine declinatas voces in gentilitate nominal!." Paul. Diacon. p. 94. " Gentilis dicitur ex eodem genere ortus, et is qui simili nom- ine appellatur," etc. See Becker, Handbuch der Romischcn Alterthumer, tiart 2, abth. 2, p. 36. The last part of the definition ought to be struck out for the Grecian gentes. The passage of Varro does not prove the historical reality of the primitive father, or genarch, JEmilius, but it proves that the members of the gens believed in him. Dr. Wilda.in his learned work, "Uas Deutsche Strafrecht," (Halle, 1842,) dissents from Niebuhr in the opposite direction, and seems to maintain that the Grecian and Roman gentes were really distant blood relations (p. 123). How this can be proved, I do not know : and it is inconsistent with the opin- ion which he advances in the preceding page (p. 122), very justly, that these quasi families are primordial facts in early human society, beyond which we cannot carry our researches. "The farther we go back in history, the more does the community exhibit the form of a family, though in reality it is not a mere family. This is the limit of historical research, which nc man can transgress with impunity," (p. 122 )
