In order to understand the condition of Grecian society, anterior to the formation of the state, it is necessary to know the constitution and principles of the Grecian gens; for the character of the unit determines the character of its compounds in the ascending series, and can alone furnish the means for their explanation.
THE ATHENIAN PHRATRY.--HOW FORMED.--DEFINITION OF DIKÆARCHUS.--OBJECTS CHIEFLY RELIGIOUS.--THE PHRATRIARCH.--THE TRIBE.--COMPOSED OF THREE PHRATRIES.--THE PHYLO-BASILEUS.--THE NATION.--COMPOSED OF FOUR TRIBES.--BOULE, OR COUNCIL OF CHIEFS.--AGORA, OR ASSEMBLY OF THE PEOPLE.--THE BASILEUS.--TENURE OF THE OFFICE.--MILITARY AND PRIESTLY FUNCTIONS.--CIVIL FUNCTIONS NOT SHOWN.--GOVERNMENTS OF THE HEROIC AGE, MILITARY DEMOCRACIES.--ARISTOTLE'S DEFINITION OF A BASILEUS.--LATER ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY.--INHERITED FROM THE GENTES.--ITS POWERFUL INFLUENCE UPON ATHENIAN DEVELOPMENT.
The phratry, as we have seen, was the second stage of organization in the Grecian social system. It consisted of several gentes united for objects, especially religious, which were common to them all. It had a natural foundation in the bond of kin, as the gentes in a phratry were probably subdivisions of an original gens, a knowledge of the fact having been preserved by tradition. "All the contemporary members of the phratry of Hekatæus," Mr. Grote remarks, "had a common god for their ancestor at the sixteenth degree,"[250] which could not have been asserted unless the several gentes comprised in the phratry of Hekatæus, were supposed to be derived by segmentation from an original gens. This genealogy, although in part fabulous, would be traced according to gentile usages. Dikæarchus supposed that the practice of certain gentes in supplying each other with wives, led to the phratric organization for the performance of common religious rites.
This is a plausible explanation, because such marriages would intermingle the blood of the gentes. On the contrary, gentes formed, in the course of time, by the division of a gens and by subsequent subdivisions, would give to all a common lineage, and form a natural basis for their re-integration in a phratry. As such the phratry would be a natural growth, and as such only can it be explained as a gentile institution. The gentes thus united were brother gentes, and the association itself was a brotherhood as the term imports.