Ancient Society. Lewis H. Morgan 1877

Chapter V
Monogamian Family

The origin of society has been so constantly traced to the monogamian family that the comparatively modern date now assigned to this family bears the semblance of novelty. Those writers who have investigated the origin of society philosophically, found it difficult to conceive of its existence apart from the family as its unit, or of the family itself as other than monogamian. They also found it necessary to regard the married pair as the nucleus of a group of persons, a part of whom were servile, and all of whom were under power; thus arriving at the conclusion that society began in the patriarchal family, when it first became organized. Such, in fact, was the most ancient form of the institution made known to us among the Latin, Grecian and Hebrew tribes. Thus, by relation, the patriarchal family was made the typical family of primitive society, conceived either in the Latin or Hebrew form, paternal power being the essence of the organism.

The gens, as it appeared in the later period of barbarism, was well understood, but it was erroneously supposed to be subsequent in point of time to the monogamian family. A necessity for some knowledge of the institutions of barbarous and even of savage tribes is becoming constantly more apparent as a means for explaining our own institutions. With the assumption made that the monogamian family was the unit of organization in the social system, the gens was treated as an aggregation of families, the tribe as an aggregation of gentes and the nation as an aggregate of tribes. The error lies in the first proposition. It has been shown that the gens entered entire into the phratry, the phratry into the tribe, and the tribe into the nation; but the family could not enter entire into the gens, because husband and wife were necessarily of different gentes. The wife, down to the latest period, counted herself of the gens of her father, and bore the name of his gens among the Romans. As all the parts must enter into the whole, the family could not become the unit of the gentile organization. That place was held by the gens. Moreover, the patriarchal family, whether of the Roman or of the Hebrew type, was entirely unknown throughout the period of savagery, through the Older, and probably through the Middle, and far into the Later Period of barbarism. After the gens had appeared, ages upon ages, and even period upon period, rolled away before the monogamian family came into existence. It was not until after civilization commenced that it became permanently established.

Its modern appearance among the Latin tribes may be inferred from the signification of the word family, derived from familia, which contains the same element as foimulus, = servant, supposed to be derived from the Oscan famel, = servus, a slave.^[1] In its primary meaning the word family, had no relation to the married pair or their children, but to the body of slaves and servants who labored for its maintenance, and were under the power of the pater familias. Familia in some testamentary dispositions is used as equivalent to patrimonium, the inheritance which passed to the heir.^[2] It was introduced in Latin society to define a new organism, the head of which held wife and children, and a body of servile persons under paternal power. Mommsen uses the phrase “body of servants” as the Latin signification of femilia.^[3] This term, therefore, and the idea it represents, are no older than the iron-clad family system of the Latin tribes, which came in after field agriculture and after legalized servitude, as well as after the separation of the Greeks and Latins. If any name was given to the anterior family it is not now ascertainable.

In two forms of the family, the consanguine and punaluan, paternal power was impossible. When the gens appeared in the midst of the punaluan group it united the several sisters, with their children and descendants in the female line, in perpetuity, in a gens, which became the unit of organization in the social system it created. Out of this state of things the syndyasmian family was gradually evolved, and with it the germ of paternal power, The growth of this power, at first feeble and fluctuating, then commenced, and it steadily increased, as the new family more and more assumed monogamian characteristics, with the upward progress of society. When property began to be created in masses, and the desire for its transmission to children had changed descent from the female line to the male, a real foundation for paternal power was for the first time established. Among the Hebrew and Latin tribes, when first known, the patriarchal family of the Hebrew type existed among the former, and of the Roman type among the latter; founded in both cases upon the limited or absolute servitude of a number of persons with their families, all of whom, with the wives and children of the patriarch in one case, and of the pater familias in the other, were under paternal power. It was an exceptional, and, in the Roman family, an excessive development of paternal authority, which, so far from being universal, was restricted in the main to the people named. Gaius declares that the power of the Roman father over his children was peculiar to the Romans, and that in general no other people had the same power.^[4]

It will be sufficient to present a few illustrations of the early monogamian family from classical writers to give an impression of its character. Monogamy appears in a definite form in the Later Period of barbarism. Long prior to this time some of its characteristics had undoubtedly attached themselves to the previous syndyasmian family; but the essential element of the former, an exclusive co- habitation, could not be asserted of the latter.

One of the earliest and most interesting illustrations was found in the family of the ancient Germans. Their institutions were homogeneous and indigenous; and the people were advancing toward civilization. Tacitus, in a few lines, states their usages with respect to marriage, without giving the composition of the family or defining its attributes. After stating that marriages were strict among them, and pronouncing it commendable, he further remarks, that almost alone among barbarians they contended themselves with a single wife — a very few excepted, who were drawn into plural marriages, not from passion, but on account of their rank. That the wife did not bring a dowry to her husband, but the husband to his wife, .... a caparisoned horse, and a shield, with a spear and sword. That by virtue of these gifts the wife was espoused.^[5] The presents, in the nature of purchasing gifts, which probably in an earlier condition went to the gentile kindred of the bride, were now presented to the bride.

Elsewhere he mentions the two material facts in which the substance of monogamy is found:^[6] firstly, that each man was contented with a single wife (singulis uxoribus contenti sunt); and, secondly, that the women lived fenced around with chastity, (septae pudicitia agunt). It seems probable, from what is known of the condition of the family in different ethnical periods, that this of the ancient Germans was too weak an organization to face alone the hardships of life; and, as a consequence, sheltered itself in, a communal household composed of related families. When slavery became an institution, these households would gradually disappear. German society was not far enough advanced at this time for the appearance of a high type of the monogamian family.

With respect to the Homeric Greeks, the family, although monogamian, was low in type. Husbands required chastity in their wives, which they sought to enforce by some degree of seclusion; hut they did not admit the reciprocal obligation by which alone it could be permanently secured. Abundant evidence appears in the Homeric poems that woman had few rights men were bound to respect. Such female captives as were swept into their vessels by the Grecian chiefs, on their way to Troy, were appropriated to their passions without compunction and without restraint. It must be taken as a faithful picture of the times, whether the incidents narrated in the poems were real or fictitious. Although the persons were captives, it reflects the low estimate placed upon woman. Her dignity was unrecognized, and her personal rights were insecure. To appease the resentment of Achilles, Agamemnon proposed, in a council of the Grecian chiefs, to give to him, among other things, seven Lesbian women excelling in personal beauty, reserved for himself from the spoil of that city, Briseis herself to go among the number; and should Troy be taken, the further right to select twenty Trojan women, the fairest of all next to Argive Helen.^[7] “Beauty and Booty” were the watchwords of the Heroic Age unblushingly avowed. The treatment of their female captives reflects the culture of the period with respect to women in general. Men having no regard for the parental, marital or personal rights of their enemies, could not have attained to any high conception of their own.

In describing the tent life of the unwedded Achilles, and of his friend Patroclus, Homer deemed it befitting the character and dignity of Achilles as a chief to show, that he slept in the recess of his well-constructed tent, and by his side lay a female, fair cheeked Diomede, whom he had brought from Lesbos. And that Patroclus on the other side reclined, and by him also lay fair-waisted Iphis whom noble Achilles gave him, having captured her at Scyros.^[8] Such usages and customs on the part of unmarried as well as married men, cited approvingly by the great poet of the period, and sustained by public sentiment, tend to show that whatever of monogamy existed, was through an forced constraint upon wives, while their husbands were not monogamists in the preponderating number of cases. Such a family has quite as many syndyasmian as monogamian characteristics.

The condition of woman in the Heroic, Age is supposed to have been more favourable, and her position in the household more honourable than it was at the commencement of civilization, and even afterwards under their highest development. It may have been true in a far anterior period before descent was changed to the male line, but there seems to be little room for the conjecture at the time named. A great change for the better occurred, so far as the means and mode of life were concerned, but it served to render more conspicuous the real estimate placed upon her through the Later Period of barbarism. Elsewhere attention has been called to the fact, that when descent was changed from the female line to the male, it operated injuriously upon the position and rights of the wife and mother. Her children were transferred from her own gens to that of her husband, and she forfeited her agnatic rights by her marriage without obtaining an equivalent. Before the change, the members of her own gens, in all probability, predominated in the household, which gave full force to the maternal bond, and made the woman rather more than the man the centre of the family. After the change she stood alone in the household of her husband, isolated from her gentile kindred. It must have weakened the influence of the maternal bond; and have operated powerfully to lower her position and arrest her progress in the social scale. Among the prosperous classes, her condition of enforced seclusion, together with the avowed primary object of marriage, to beget children in lawful wedlock, lead to the inference that her position was less favourable in the Heroic Age than in the subsequent period, concerning which we are much better informed.

From first to last among the Greeks there was a principle of egotism or studied selfishness at work among the males, tending to lessen the appreciation of woman, scarcely found among savages. It reveals itself in their plan of domestic life, which in the higher ranks secluded the wife to enforce an exclusive cohabitation, without admitting the reciprocal obligation on the part of her husband. It implies the existence of an antecedent conjugal system of the Turanian type, against which it was designed to guard. So powerfully had the usages of centuries stamped upon the minds of Grecian women a sense of their inferiority, that they did not recover from it to the latest period of Grecian ascendancy. It was, perhaps, one of the sacrifices required of womankind to bring this portion of the human race out of the syndyasmian into the monogamian family. It still remains an enigma that a race, with endowments great enough to impress their mental life upon the world, should have remained essentially barbarian in their treatment of the female sex at the height of their civilization. Women were not treated with cruelty, nor with discourtesy within the range of the privileges allowed them; but their education was superficial, intercourse with the opposite sex was denied them, and their inferiority was inoculated as a principle, until it came to be accepted as a fact by the women themselves. The wife was not the companion and the equal of her husband, but stood to him in the relation of a daughter; thus denying the fundamental principle of monogamy, as the institution in its highest form must be understood. The wife is necessarily the equal of her husband in dignity, in personal rights and in social position. We may thus discover at what a price of experience and endurance this great institution of modern society has been won.

Our information is quite ample and specific with respect to the condition of Grecian women and the Grecian family during the historical period. Becker, with the marvellous research for which his works are distinguished, has collected the principal facts and presented them with dearness and force.^[9] His statements, while they do not furnish a complete picture of the family of the historical period, are quite sufficient to indicate the great difference between the Grecian and the modern civilized family, and also to show the condition of the monogamian family in the early stages of its development.

Among the facts stated by Becker, there are two that deserve further notice: first, the declaration that the chief object of marriage was the procreation of children in lawful wedlock; and second, the seclusion of women to insure this result. The two are intimately connected, and throw some reflected light upon the previous condition from which they had emerged. In the first place, the passion of love was unknown among the barbarians. They are below the sentiment, which is the offspring of civilization and superadded refinement. The Greeks in general, as their marriage customs show, had not attained to a knowledge of this passion, although there were, of course, numerous exceptions. Physical worth, in Grecian estimation, was the measure of all the excellences of which the female sex were capable. Marriage, therefore, was not grounded upon sentiment, but upon necessity and duty. These considerations are those which governed the Iroquois and the Aztecs; in fact they originated in barbarism, and reveal the anterior barbarous condition of the ancestors of the Grecian tribes. It seems strange that they were sufficient to answer the Greek ideal of the family relation in the midst of Grecian civilization. The growth of property and the desire for its transmission to children was, in reality, the moving power which brought in monogamy to insure legitimate heirs, and to limit their number to the actual progeny of the married pair. A knowledge of the paternity of children had begun to be realized under the syndyasmian family, from which the Grecian form was evidently derived, but it had not attained the requisite degree of certainty because of the survival of some portion of the ancient jura conjugialia. It explains the new usage which made its appearance in the Upper Status of barbarism; namely, the seclusion of wives. An implication to this effect arises from the circumstance that a necessity for the seclusion of the wife must have existed at the time, and which seems to have been so formidable that the plan of domestic life among the civilized Greeks was, in reality, a system of female confinement and restraint. Although the particulars cited relate more especially to the family among the prosperous classes, the spirit it evinces was doubtless general.

Turning next to the Roman family, the condition of woman is more favourable, but her subordination the same.

She was treated with respect in Rome as in Athens, but in the Roman family her influence and authority were, greater. As mater familias, she was mistress of the family. She went into the streets freely without restraint on the part of her husband, and frequented with the men the theatres and festive banquets. In the house she was not confined to particular apartments, neither was she excluded from the table of the men. The absence of the worst restrictions placed upon Grecian females was favourable to the growth of a sense of personal dignity and of independence among Roman women. Plutarch-remarks that after the peace with the Sabines, effected through the intervention of the Sabine women, many honourable privileges were conferred upon them; the men were to give them the way when they met on the street, they were not to utter a vulgar word in the presence of females, nor appear nude before them. Marriage, however, placed the wife in the power of her husband (in manum viri); the notion that she must remain under power following, by an apparent necessity, her emancipation by her marriage from paternal power. The husband treated his wife as his daughter, and not as his equal. Moreover, he had the power of correction and of life and death in ease of adultery; but the exercise of this last power seems to have been subject to the concurrence of the council of her gens.

Unlike other people, the Romans possessed three forms of marriage. All alike placed the wife in the hand of her husband, and recognized as the chief end of marriage the procreation of children in lawful wedlock (liberorum querendorum causa).^[11] These forms (coeferreatio, coemptio, and usns) lasted through the Republic, but fell out under the Empire, when a fourth form, the free marriage, was generally adopted, because it did not place the wife in the power of her husband. Divorce, from the earliest period, was at the option of the parties, a characteristic of the syndyasmian family, and transmitted probably from that source. They rarely occurred, however, until near the dose of the Republic.^[12] The licentiousness which prevailed in Grecian and Roman cities at the height of civilization has generally been regarded as a lapse from a higher and purer condition of virtue and morality. But the fact is capable of a different, or at least of a modified explanation. They had never attained to a pure morality in the intercourse of the sexes from which to decline. Repressed or moderated in the midst of war and strife endangering the national existence, the license revived with peace and prosperity, because the moral elements of society had not risen against it for its extirpation. This licentiousness was, in all probability, the remains of an ancient conjugal system, never fully eradicated, which had followed down from barbarism as a social, taint, and now expressed its excesses in the new channel of hetaerism. If the Greeks and Romans had learned to respect the equities of monogamy, instead of secluding their wives in the gynaeconitis in one case, and of holding them under power in the other, there is reason to believe that society among them would have presented a very different aspect. Since neither one nor the other had developed any higher morality they had but little occasion to mourn over a decay of public morals. The substance of the explanation lies in the fact that neither recognized in its integrity the principle of monogamy, which alone was able to place their respective societies upon a moral basis. The premature destruction of the ethnic life of these remarkable races is due in no small measure to their failure to develop and utilize the mental, moral and conservative forces of the female intellect, which were not less essential than their own corresponding forces to their progress and preservation. After a long protracted experience in barbarism, during which they won the remaining elements of civilization, they perished politically, at the end of a brief career, seemingly from the exhilaration of the new life they had created.

Among the Hebrews, whist the patriarchal family in the early period was common with the chiefs, the monogamian, into which the patriarchal soon subsided, was common among the people. But with respect to the constitution of the latter, and the relations of husband and wife in the family, the details are scanty. Without seeking to multiply illustrations, it is plain that the monogamian family had grown into the farm in which it appeared, at the commencement of the historical period, from a lower type; and that, during the classical period if, advanced sensibly, though without attaining its highest form. It evidently sprang from a previous syndyasmian family as its immediate germ; and while improving with human progress it fell short of its true ideal in the classical period. Its highest known perfection, at least, was not attained until modern times. The portraiture of society in the Upper Status of barbarism by the early writers implies the general practice of monogamy, but with attending circumstances indicating that it was the monogamian family of the future struggling into existence under adverse influences, feeble in vitality, rights and immunities, and still environed with the remains of an ancient conjugal system.

As the Malayan system expressed the relationships that existed in the consanguine family, and as the Turanian expressed those which existed in the punaluan, so the Aryan expressed those which existed in the monogamian; each family resting upon a different and distinct form of marriage.

It cannot be shown absolutely, in the present state of our knowledge, that the Aryan, Semitic and Uralian families of mankind formerly possessed the Turanian system of consanguinity, and that it fell into desuetude under monogamy. Such, however, would be the presumption from the body of ascertained facts. All the evidence points in this direction so decisively as to exclude any other hypothesis. Firstly. The organization into gentes had a natural origin in the punaluan family, where a group of sisters married to each other’s husbands furnished, with their children and descendants in the female line, the exact circumscription as well as the body of a gens in its archaic form. The principal branches of the Aryan family were organized in gentes when first known historically, sustaining the inference that, when one undivided people, they were thus organized. From this fact the further presumption arises that they derived the organization through a remote ancestry who lived in that same punaluan condition which gave birth to this remarkable and widespread institution. Besides this, the Turanian system of consanguinity is still found connected with the gens in its archaic form among the American aborigines. This natural connection would remain unbroken until a change of social condition occurred, such as monogamy would produce, having power to work its overthrow. Secondly. In the Aryan system of consanguinity there is some evidence pointing to the same conclusion. It may well be supposed that a large portion of the nomenclature of the Turanian system would fall out under monogamy, if this system had previously prevailed among the Aryan nations. The application of its terms to categories of persons, whose relation- ships would now be discriminated from each other, would compel their abandonment. It is impossible to explain the impoverished condition of the original nomenclature of the Aryan system except on this hypothesis. All there was of it common to the several Aryan dialects are the terms for father and mother, brother and sister, and son and daughter; and a common term (San., naptar; Lat., nepos; Gr., anepsios;) applied indiscriminately to nephew, grandson, and cousin. They could never have attained to the advanced condition implied by monogamy with such a scanty nomenclature of blood relationships, But with a previous system, analogous to the Turanian, this impoverishment can be explained. The terms for brother and sister were not in the abstract, and new creations, because these relationships under the Turanian system were conceived universally as elder and younger; and the several terms were applied to categories of persons, including persons not own brothers and sisters. In the Aryan system this distinction is laid aside, and for the first time these relationships were conceived in the abstract. Under monogamy the old terms were inapplicable because they were applied to collaterals. Remains of a prior Turanian system, however, still appear in the system of the Uralian family, as among the Hungarians, where brothers and, sisters are classified into elder and younger by special terms. In French, also, besides frere, and soeur, we find aine, elder brother, pune and cadet, younger brother, and ainee and cadette, elder and younger sister. So also in Sanskrit we find agrajar, and amujar, and agrajri, and amujri for the same relationships; but whether the latter are from Sanskrit or aboriginal sources, I am unable to state. In the Aryan dialects the terms for brother and sister are the same words dialectically changed, the Greek having substituted adelphos for phrater. If common terms once existed in these dialects for elder and younger brother and sister, their previous application to categories of persons would render them inapplicable, as an exclusive distinction, to own brothers and sisters. The falling out from the Aryan system of this striking and beautiful feature of the Turanian requires a strong motive for its occurrence, which the previous existence and abandonment of the Turanian system would explain. It would be difficult to find any other. It is not supposable that the Aryan nations were without a term for grandfather in the original speech, a relationship recognized universally among savage and barbarous tribes; and yet there is no common term for this relationship in the Aryan dialects. In Sanskrit we have pitameha, in Greek poppos, in Latin ovus, in Russian djed, in Welsh hendad, which last is a compound like the German grosswader and the English grandfather. These terms are radically different. But with a term under a previous system, which was applied not only to the grandfather proper, his brothers, and his several male cousins, but also to the brothers and several male cousins of his grandmother, it could not be made to signify a lineal grandfather and progenitor under monogamy. Its abandonment would be apt to occur in course of time. The absence of a term for this relationship in the original speech seems to find in this manner a sufficient explanation. Lastly. There is no term for uncle and aunt in the abstract, and no special terms for uncle and aunt on the father’s side and on the mother’s side running through the Aryan dialects. We find pitroya, patros, and patruus for paternal uncle in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin; stryc in Slavonic for the same, and a common term, eam, oom, and oheim in Anglo-Saxon, Belgian, and German, and none in the Celtic. It is equally inconceivable that there was no term in the original Aryan speech for maternal uncle, a relationship made so conspicuous by the gens among barbarous tribes. If their previous system was Turanian, there was necessarily a term for this uncle, but restricted to the own brothers of the mother, and to her several male cousins. Its application to such a number of persons in a category, many of whom could not be uncles under monogamy, would, for the reasons slated, compel its abandonment. It is evident that a previous system of some kind must have given place to the Aryan.

Assuming that the nations of the Aryan, Semitic and Uralian families formerly possessed the Turanian system of consanguinity, the transition from it to a descriptive system was simple and natural, after the old system, through monogamy, had become untrue to descents as they would then exist. Every relationship under monogamy is specific. The new system, formed under such circumstances, would describe the persons by means of the primary terms or a combination of them: as brother’s son for nephew, father’s brother for uncle, and father’s brother’s son for cousin. Such was the original of the present system of the Aryan, Semitic and Uralian families. The generalizations they now contain were of later introduction. All the tribes possessing the Turanian system describe their kindred by the same formula, when asked in what manner one person was related to another. A descriptive system precisely like the Aryan always existed both with the Turanian and the Malayan, not as a system of consanguinity, for they bad a permanent system, but as a means of tracing relationships. It is plain from the impoverished conditions of their nomenclatures that the Aryan, Semitic and Uralian nations must have rejected a prior system of consanguinity of some kind. The conclusion, therefore, is reasonable that when the monogamian family became generally established these nations fell back upon the old descriptive form, always in use under the Turanian system, and allowed the previous one to die out as useless and untrue to descents. This would be the natural and obvious mode of transition from the Turanian into the Aryan system; and it explains, in a satisfactory manner, the origin as well as peculiar character of the latter.

In order to complete the exposition of the monogamian family in its relations to the Aryan system of consanguinity, it will be necessary to present this system somewhat in detail, as has been done in the two previous cases.

A comparison of its forms in the several Aryan dialects shows that the original of the present system was purely descriptive.^[13] The Erse, which is the typical Aryan form, and the Esthonian, which is the typical Uralian, are still descriptive. In the Erse the only terms for the blood relationships are the primary, namely, those for father and mother, brother and sister, and son and daughter. All the remaining kindred are described by means of these terms, but commencing in the reverse order; thus, brother, son of brother, and son of son of brother. The Aryan system exhibits the actual relationships under monogamy, and assumes that the paternity of children is known.

In course of time a method of description, materially different from the Celtic, was engrafted upon the new system; but without changing its radical creatures. It was introduced by the Roman civilians to perfect the framework of a code of descents, to the necessity for which we are indebted for its existence. Their improved method has been adopted by the several Aryan nations among whom the Roman influence extended. The Slavonic system has some features entirely peculiar and evidently of Turanian origin."^[14] To obtain a knowledge historically of our present system it is necessary to resort to the Roman, as perfected by the civilians.^[15] The additions were slight, but they changed the method of describing kindred. They consisted chiefly, as elsewhere stated, in distinguishing the relationships of uncle and aunt on the father’s side from those on the mother’s side, with the invention of terms to express these relationships in the concrete; and in creating a term for grandfather to be used as the correlative of nepos. With these terms and the primary, in connection with suitable augments, they were enabled to systematize the relationships in the lineal and in the first five collateral lines, which inducled the body of the kindred of every individual. The Roman is the most perfect and scientific system of consanguinity under monogamy which has yet appeared; and it has been made more attractive by the invention of an unusual number of terms to express the marriage relationships. From it we may learn our own system, which has adopted its improvements, better than from the Anglo- Saxon or Celtic. In a table, at the end of this chapter, the Latin and Arabic forms are placed side by side as representatives, respectively, of the Aryan and Semitic systems. The Arabic seems to have passed through processes similar to the Roman, and with similar results. The Roman only will be explained.

From Ego to tritavus, in the lineal line, are six generations of ascendants, and from the same to trinepos are the same number of decadents, in the description of which but four radical terms are used. If it were desirable to ascend above the sixth ancestor, tritavus would become a new starting-point of description; thus, tritavi pater, the father of tritaus, and so upward to tritavi tritavus, who is the twelfth ancestor of Ego in the lineal right line, male. In our rude nomenclature the phrase grandfather’s grand- father must be repeated six times to express the same relationship, or rather to describe the same person. In like manner trinepotis tri«epos carries us to the twelfth descendant of Ego in the right lineal male line.

The first collateral line, male, which commences with brother, frater, runs as follows: fratris filius, son of brother, fratris nepos, grandson of brother, fratris pronepos, greatgrandson of brother, and on to fratris pronepos, the great-grandson of the great-grandson of the brother of Ego. If it were necessary to extend the description to the twelfth descendant, fratris trinepos would become a second starting-point; from which we should have fratris trinepotis trinepos, as the end of the series. By this simple method frater is made the root of descent in this line, and every person belonging to it is referred to him by the force of this term in the description; and we know at once that each person thus described belongs to the first collateral line, male. It is therefore specific and complete. In like manner, the same line, female, commences with sister, soror, giving for the series, sororis filia, sister’s daughter, sororis neptis, sister’s grand-daughter, sororis proneptis, sister’s great-granddaughter, and on to sororis trineptis, her sixth descendant, and to sororis trineptis trineptis, her twelfth descendant. While the two branches of the first collateral line originate, in strictness, in the father, pater, the common bond of connection between them, yet, by making the brother and sister the root of descent in the description, not only the line but its two branches are maintained distinct, and the relationship of each person to Ego is specialized. This is one of the chief excellences of the system, for it is carried into all the lines, as a purely scientific method of distinguishing and describing kindred. The second collateral line, male, on the father’s side, commences with father’s brother, patruus, and is composed of him and his descendants, Each person, by the terms used to describe him, is referred with entire precision to: his proper position in the line, and his relationship is indicated specifically; thus, patrui filius, son of paternal uncle, patrui nepos, grandson of and patrui pronepos, great grandson of paternal uncle, and on to patrui trinepos, the sixth descendant of patruus. If it became necessary to extend this line to the twelfth generation we should have, after passing through the intermediate degrees, patrui trinepotis, trmePos, who is the great-grandson.of the great- grandson of patrui trinepos, the great-grandson of the great-grandson of patruus. It will he observed that the term for cousin is rejected in the formal method used in the Pandects. He is described as patrui filius, but he was also called a brother patrual, frater patruelis, and among the people at large by the common term consobrinus, from which our term cousin is derived.^[16] The second collateral line, female, on the father’s side, commences with father’s sister, amita, paternal aunt; and her descendants are described according to the same general plan; thus, amitae filia, paternal aunt’s daughter, amitae neptis, paternal aunt’s granddaughter, and on to amitae trineptis, and to amitae trineptis trineptis. In this branch of the line the special term for this cousin, amitina, is also set aside for the descriptive phrase amitae filia.

In like manner the third collateral line, male, on the father’s side commences with grandfather’s brother, who is styled patruus magnus, or great paternal uncle. At this point in the nomenclature, special terms fail, and compounds are resorted to, although the relationship itself is in the concrete. It is evident that this relationship was not discriminated until a comparatively modern period. No existing language, so far as the inquiry has been extended, possesses an original term for this relationship, although without it this line cannot be described except by the Celtic method. If he were called simply grandfather’s brother the phrase would describe a person, leaving the relationship to implication; but if he is styled a great-uncle, it expresses a relationship in the concrete. With the first person in this branch of the line thus made definite, all of his descendants are referred to him, by the form of the description, as the root of descent; and the line, the side, the particular branch, and the degree of the relationship of each person are at once fully expressed. This line also may be extended to the twelfth descendant, which would give for the series patrui magni filius, son of the paternal great-uncle, patrui magni nepos, and on to patrui magni trinepos, and ending with patrui magni trinepotis trinepos. The same line, female, commences with grandfather’s sister, amita magna, great paternal aunt; and her descendants are similarly described.

The fourth and fifth collateral lines, male, on the father’s side, commence, respectively, with great-grandfather’s brother, who is styled patruus major, greater paternal uncle, and with great-great-grandfather’s brother, patruus maximus, greatest paternal uncle. In extending the series we have in the fourth patrui majoris filius, and on to patrui majoris trinepos; and in the fifth patrui maximi filius, and on to patrui maximi trinepos. The female branches commence, respectively, with amita major, greater, and amita maxima, greatest paternal aunt; and the description of persons in each follows in the same order.

Thus far the lines have been on the father’s side only. The necessity for independent terms for uncle and aunt on the mother’s side to complete the Roman method of description is now apparent; the relatives on the mother’s side being equally numerous, and entirely distinct. These terms were found in avunculus, maternal uncle, and matertera, maternal aunt. In describing the relatives on the mother’s side, the lineal female line is substituted for the male, but the first collateral line remains the same. In the second collateral line, male, on the mother’s side, we have for the series avunculus, maternal uncle, avunculi filius, avunculi nepos, and on to avunculi tri«epos, and ending with av~(.ncsdi trmepotis trinepos. In the female branch, matertera, maternal aunt, materterae filia, and on as before. The third collateral line, male and female, commence, respectively, with avunculus magnus, and matertera magna, great maternal uncle and aunt; the fourth with avunculus major, and matertera major, greater maternal uncle, and aunt; and the fifth with avunculus maximus, and matertera maxima, greatest maternal uncle, and aunt. The descriptions of persons in each line and branch are in form corresponding with those previously given.

Since the first five collateral lines embrace as wide a circle of kindred as it was necessary to include for the practical objects of a code of descents, the ordinary formula of the Roman civilians did not extend beyond this number. In terms for the marriage relationships, the Latin language is remarkably opulent, whilst our mother English betrays its poverty by the use of such unseemly phrases as father-in-law, son-in-law, brother-in-law, step-father, and. step-son, to express some twenty very common, and very near relationships, nearly all of which are provided with special terms in the Latin nomenclature.

It will not be necessary to pursue further the details of the Roman system of consanguinity. The principal and most important of its features have been presented, and in s manner sufficiently special to render the whole intelligible. For simplicity of method, felicity of description, distinctness of arrangement by lines and branches, and beauty of nomenclature, it is incomparable. It stands in its method pre-eminently at the head of all the systems of relationship ever perfected by man, and furnishes one of many illustrations that to whatever the Roman mind had occasion to give organic form, it placed once for all upon a solid foundation.

No reference has been made to the details of the Arabic system; but, as the two forms are given in the Table, the explanation made of one will suffice or the other, to which it is equally applicable.

With its additional special terms, and its perfected method, consanguinei are assumed to be connected, in virtue of their descent, through married pairs, from common ancestors. They arrange themselves in a lineal and divergent from the former. These are several collateral lines; and the latter are necessary consequences of monogamy. The relationships of each person to the central Ego is accurately defined and, except as to those who stand in an identical relationship, is kept distinct from every other by means of a special term or descriptive phrase. It also implies the certainty of the parentage of every individual, which monogamy alone could assure. Moreover, it describes the relationships in the monogamian family as they actually exist. Nothing can be plainer than that this form of marriage made this form of the family, and that the latter created this system of consanguinity. The three are necessary parts of a whole where the descriptive system is exclusive. What we know by direct observation to be true with respect to the monogamian family, its law of marriage and its system of consanguinity, has been shown to be equally true with respect to the punaluan family, its law of marriage and its system of consanguinity; and not less so of the consanguine family, its form of marriage and its system of consanguinity. Any of these three parts being given, the existence of the other two with it, at some one time, may be deduced with certainty. If any difference could be made in favour of the superior materiality of any one of the three, the preference would belong to systems of consanguinity. They have crystallized the evidence declaring the marriage law and the form of the family in the relationship of every individual person; thus preserving not, only the highest evidence of the fact, but as many concurring declarations thereto as there are members united by the bond of consanguinity. It furnishes a test of the high rank of a domestic institution, which must be supposed incapable of design to pervert the truth, and which, therefore, may be trusted implicitly as to whatever it necessarily teaches. Finally, it is with respect to systems of consanguinity that our information is most complete. The five successive forms of the family, mentioned at the outset, have now been presented and explained, with such evidence of their existence, and such particulars of their structure as our present knowledge furnishes. Although the treatment of each has been general, it has touched the essential facts and attributes, and established the main proposition, that the family commenced in the consanguine, and grew, through successive stages of, development, into the monogamian. There is nothing in this general conclusion which might not have been anticipated from a priori considerations; but the difficulties and the hindrances which obstructed its growth are seen to have been far greater than would have been supposed. As a growth with the ages of time, it has shared in all the vicissitudes of human experience, and now reveals more expressively, perhaps, than any other institution, the graduated scale of human progress from the abyss of primitive savagery, through barbarism, to civilization. It brings us near to the daily life of the human family in the different epochs of its progressive development, indicating, in: some measure, its hardships, its struggles and also its victories, when different periods are contrasted. We should value the great institution of the family, as it now exists, in some proportion to the expenditure of time and of intelligence in its production; and receive it as the richest legacy transmitted to us by ancient society, because it embodied and records the highest results of its varied and prolonged experience.

When the fact is accepted that the family has passed through four successive forms, and is now in a fifth, the question at once arises whether this form can be permanent in the future. The only answer that can be given is, that it must advance as society advances, and change as society changes, even as it has done in the past. It is the culture of the social system, and will reflect its culture. As the monogamian family has improved greatly since the commencement of civilization, and very sensibly in modern times, it is at least supposable that it is capable of still further improvement until the equality of the sexes is attained. Should the monogamian family in the distant future fail to answer the requirements of society, assuming the continuous progress of civilization, it is impossible to predict the nature of its successor.

Footnotes

1. Famuli origo ab Oscis dependet, apud quo servus Famul nominabuntur, unde “fami1ia” vocata.-” Festus,” p. 87.

2. Amico familiam suam, id est patrimonium suum mancipio dabat.- Gaius “Inst.,” ii, 102.

3. “History of Rome,” 1. c., 1, 95.

4. Item in potestate nostra sunt liberi nostri, quos justis nuptiis procreauimus, quod jus proprium ciuium Romanorum est: fere enim nulli alii sunt homines, qui talem in fi1ios suos habent potestatem, qualem nos habemus.- “Inst.,” 1, 55. Among other things they had the power of life and death — jus vitae necispue.

5. “Germania,” c. 18.

6. Ib., c. 19.

7. “Iliad,” ix, 128.

8. “Iliad,” 663.

9. The following condensed statement, taken from Charicles (“Excursus,” xii, Longman’s ed;, Metcalfe’s trans.), contains the material facts illustrative of the subject. After expressing the opinion that the women of Homer occupied a more honourable position in the household than the women of the historical period, he makes the following statements with respect to the condition of women, particularly at Athens and Sparta, during the high period of Grecian culture. He observes that the only excellence of which a woman was thought capable differed but little from that of a faithful slave (p. 464): that her utter want of independence led to her being considered a minor all her lifelong; that there were neither educational institutions for girls, nor any private teachers at home, their whole instruction being left to the mothers, and to nurses, and limited to spinning and weaving and other female avocations (p. 465); that they were almost entirely deprived of that most essential promoter of female culture, the society of the other sex; strangers as well as their nearest relatives being entirely excluded; even their fathers and husbands saw them but little, the men being more abroad than at home, and when at home inhabiting their own apartments; that the gynaeconitis, though not exactly a prison, nor yet a locked harem, was still the confined abode allotted for life to the female portion of the household; that it was particularly the case with the maidens, who lived in the greatest seclusion until their marriage, and, so to speak, regularly under lock and key (p. 465); that it was unbecoming for a young wife to leave the house without her husband’s knowledge, and in fact she seldom quitted it; she was thus restricted to the society of her female slaves; and her husband, if he chose to exercise it, had the power of keeping her in confinement (p. 466); that at those festivals, from which men were excluded, the women had an opportunity of seeing something of each other, which they enjoyed all the more from their ordinary seclusion; that women found it difficult to go out of their houses from these special restrictions; that no respectable lady thought of going without the attendance of a female slave assigned to her for that purpose by her husband (p. 469); that this method of treatment had the effect of rendering the girls excessively bashful and even prudish, and that even a married woman shrunk back and blushed if she chanced to be seen at, the window by a man (p. 471); that marriage in reference to the procreation of children was considered by the Greeks a necessity, enforced by their duty to the gods, to the state and to their ancestors; that until a very late period, at least, no higher consideration attached to matrimony, nor was strong attachment a frequent cause of marriage (p. 473); that whatever attachment existed sprang from the soil of sensuality, and none other than sensual love was acknowledged between man and wife (p. 473); that at Athens, and probably in the other Grecian states as well, the generation of children was considered the chief end of marriage, the choice of the bride seldom depending on previous, or at least intimate acquaintance; and more attention was paid to the position of the damsel’s family, and the amount of her dowry than to her personal qualities; that such marriages were unfavourable to the existence of real affection wherefore coldness, indifference, and discontent frequently prevailed (p 4P7); that the husband and wife took their meals together, provided no other were dining with the master of the house, for no woman who did not wish to be accounted a courtesan, would think even, in her own house of participating in the symposia of the men or of being present when her husband accidentally brought home a friend to dinner (p. 490); that the province of the wife, was the management of the entire household, and the nurture of the children — of the boys until they were placed under a master, of the girls until their marriage; that the infidelity of the wife was judged most harshly; and while it might be supposed that the woman, from her strict seclusion, was generally precluded from transgressing, they very frequently found means of deceiving their husbands; that the law imposed the duty of continence in a very unequal manner, for while the husband required from the wife the strictest fidelity; and visited with severity any dereliction on her part, he allowed himself to have intercourse with hetaerae, which conduct though not exactly approved, did not meet with any marked censure, and much less was it considered any violation of matrimonial rights (p. 494).

10. “Vit. Rom.,” c. 20.

11. Quinctilian.

12. With respect to the conjugal fidelity of Roman women, Becker remarks “that in the earlier times excesses on either side seldom occurred,” which must be set down as a mere conjecture; but “when morals began to deteriorate, we first meet with great lapses from this fidelity, and men and women outbid each other in wanton indulgence. The original modesty of the women became gradually more rare, while luxury and extravagance waxed stronger, and of many women it could be said, as Clitipho complained of his Bacchis, (Ter., “Heaut.;” ii, 1, 15), “Mea est petax, procax, magnifica, sumptuous, nobilis.” Many Roman ladies, to compensate for the neglect of their husbands, had a lover of their own, who under the pretence of being the procurator of the lady, accompanied her at all times. As a natural consequence of this, celibacy continually increased amongst the men, and there was the greatest levity respecting divorces.” — Gallus, “Excursus,” I, p,; 155 Longman’s ed., Metcalf’s trans.

13. “Systems of Consanguinity,” Table I. p. 79.

14. “ Systems of Consanguinity, “ etc., p. 40.

15. “Pandects,” lib xxviii, tit. x. and “Institutes” of Justinian. lib. iii, tit. vi.

16. Item fratres patrue1es, sorores patrueles, id est qui quae-ve ex duobus fratribus progenerantur; item consobrini (consobrinae, id est qui quae-veex duobus sororibus nascuntur (quasi consorini); item amitini amitinae, id est qui quae-ve ex fratre es sorore propagantur; sed fere vulgos istos omnes communi appellatione consobrinus vocat.- “Pand,” lib. xxxviii, tit, x.

Roman and Arabic system of Relationship

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