fantastic explanation of the vegetable names of Roman gentes.  We must remember that vegetable names are very common in American, Indian, African, and Australian totem kin.  Of sun names the Natchez and the Incas of Peru are familiar examples.  Turning from Rome to Greece, we find the [Greek] less regarded and more decadent than the gens.  Yet, according to Grote (iii. 54) the [Greek] had—­(l) sacra, ’in honour of the same god, supposed to be the primitive ancestor.’ (2) A common burial-place. (3) Certain rights of succession to property. (4) Obligations of mutual help and defence. (5) Mutual rights and obligations to intermarry in certain cases. (6) Occasionally possession of common property.

Traces of the totem among the Greek [Greek] are, naturally, few.  Almost all the known [Greek] bore patronymics derived from personal names.  But it is not without significance that the Attic demes often adopted the names of obsolescent [Greek], and that those names were, as Mr. Grote says, often ’derived from the plants and shrubs which grew in their neighbourhood.’  We have already seen that at least one Attic [Greek], the Ioxidae, revered the plant from which they derived their lineage.  One thing is certain, the totem names, and a common explanation of the totem names in Australia, correspond with the names and Mr. Grote’s explanation of the names of the Attic demes.  ‘One origin of family names,’ says Sir George Grey (ii. 228), ’frequently ascribed by the natives, is that they were derived from some vegetable or animal being common in the district which the family inhabited.’  Some writers attempt to show that the Attic [Greek] was once exogamous and counted kin on the mother’s side, by quoting the custom which permitted a man to marry his half-sister, the child of his father but not of his mother.  They infer that this permission is a survival from the time when a man’s father’s children were not reckoned as his kindred, and when kinship was counted through mothers.  Sir Henry Maine (p. 105) prefers M. Fustel De Coulanges’ theory, that the marriage of half-brothers and sisters on the father’s side was intended to save the portion of the girl to the family estate.  Proof of this may be adduced from examination of all the recorded cases of such marriages in Athens.  But the reason thus suggested would have equally justified marriage between brothers and sisters on both sides, and this was reckoned incest.  A well-known line in Aristophanes shows how intense was Athenian feeling about the impiety of relations with a sister uterine.

On the whole, the evidence which we have adduced tends to establish some links between the ancient [Greek] and gens, and the totem kindreds of savages.  The indications are not strong, but they all point in one direction.  Considering the high civilisation of Rome and Greece at the very dawn of history—­considering the strong natural bent of these peoples toward refinement—­it is almost remarkable that even the slight testimonies we have been considering should have survived.