"The gentes both at Athens, and in other parts of Greece, bore a patronymic name, the stamp of their believed common paternity.[247] ... But at Athens, at least after the revolution of Kleisthenês, the gentile name was not employed: a man was described by his own single name, followed first by the name of his father, and next by that of the deme to which he belonged,--as _Aeschinês son of Atromêtus, a Kothôkid_.... The gens constituted a close incorporation, both as to property and as to persons. Until the time of Solon, no man had any power of testamentary disposition. If he died without children, his gennêtes succeeded to his property, and so they continued to do even after Solon, if he died intestate. An orphan girl might be claimed in marriage of right by any member of the gens, the nearest agnates being preferred; if she was poor, and he did not choose to marry her himself, the law of Solon compelled him to provide her with a dowry proportional to his enrolled scale of property, and to give her out in marriage to another.... If a man was murdered, first his near relations, next his gennêtes and phrators, were both allowed and required to prosecute the crime at law; while his fellow demots, or inhabitants of the same deme, did not possess the like right of prosecuting. All that we hear of the most ancient Athenian laws is based upon the gentile and phratric divisions, which are treated throughout as extensions of the family. It is to be observed that this division is completely independent of any property qualification--rich men as well as poor being comprehended in the same gens. Moreover, the different gentes were very unequal in dignity, arising chiefly from the religious ceremonies of which each possessed the hereditary and exclusive administration, and which, being in some cases considered of pre-eminent sanctity in reference to the whole city, were therefore nationalized. Thus the Eumolpidæ and Kêrykes, who supplied the hierophant and superintendent of the mysteries of the Eleusinian Dêmêtêr--and the Butadæ, who furnished the priestess of Athênê Polias, as well as the priest of Poseidôn Erechtheus in the Acropolis--seem to have been reverenced above all the other gentes."[248]