Keeping in mind the antique and ‘obsolescent’ character of the gens and [Greek], let us examine the theories of the origin of these associations.  The Romans themselves knew very little about the matter.  Cicero quotes the dictum of Scaevola the Pontifex, according to which the gens consisted of all persons of the same gentile name who were not in any way disqualified. {267} Thus, in America, or Australia, or Africa, all persons bearing the same totem name belong to that totem kin.  Festus defines members of a gens as persons of the same stock and same family name.  Varro says (in illustration of the relationships of words and cases) ‘Ab AEmilio homines orti AEmilii sunt gentiles.’  The two former definitions answer to the conception of a totem kin, which is united by its family name and belief in identity of origin.  Varro adds the element, in the Roman gens, of common descent from one male ancestor.  Such was the conception of the gens in historical times.  It was in its way an association of kinsfolk, real or supposed.  According to the Laws of the Twelve Tables the gentiles inherited the property of an intestate man without agnates, and had the custody of lunatics in the same circumstances.  The gens had its own sacellum or chapel, and its own sacra or religious rites.  The whole gens occasionally went into mourning when one of its members was unfortunate.  It would be interesting if it could be shown that the sacra were usually examples of ancestor-worship, but the faint indications on the subject scarcely permit us to assert this.

On the whole, Sir Henry Maine strongly clings to the belief that the gens commonly had ‘a real core of agnatic consanguinity from the very first.’  But he justly recognises the principle of imitation, which induces men to copy any fashionable institution.  Whatever the real origin of the gens, many gentes were probably copies based on the fiction of common ancestry.

On Sir Henry Maine’s system, then, the gens rather proves the constant existence of recognised male descents among the peoples where it exists.

The opposite theory of the gens is that to which Mr. M’Lennan inclined.  ’The composition and organisation of Greek and Roman tribes and commonwealths cannot well be explained except on the hypothesis that they resulted from the joint operation, in early times, of exogamy, and the system of kinship through females only.’ {268} ‘The gens’, he adds, ’was composed of all the persons in the tribe bearing the same name and accounted of the same stock.  Were the gentes really of different stocks, as their names would imply and as the people believed?  If so, how came clans of different stocks to be united in the same tribe? . . .  How came a variety of such groups, of different stocks, to coalesce in a local tribe?’ These questions, Mr. M’Lennan thought, could not be answered on the patriarchal hypothesis.  His own theory, or rather his theory as understood by the present writer, may be stated