The result of recent research into the early organization of society, the growth of the governmental idea, and the development of the family, among tribes in the ascending scale, serve to throw new and unexpected light upon the customs, ideas, institutions, and legends of early historic peoples. Upon investigation it is observed that the construction of Greek and Roman society corresponds exactly with that of existing tribes occupying a lower plane in the scale of development, and that all the institutions of these nations, although in a higher state of advancement, involve the same original principles and ideas.  
That the Greek and Roman tribes before reaching civilization had passed through exactly the same processes of development as have been witnessed in the ascending scale among the North American Indians, the Arabians, and all other extant peoples, is shown not alone by the manner in which early society was organized and held together, but by the similarity observed in their myths, legends, traditions, institutions, and social usages.
 
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Whether or not a more advanced stage of civilization had been attained by the progenitors of the Greeks and Romans is a question that does not here concern us; for, if at any time prior to the appearance of these peoples in history, a higher plane of life had been reached, it is reasonable to suppose that such a state was gained under gentile forms of society, especially as their various institutions at the beginning of the historic period represent them as still to a considerable extent governed by the ideas peculiar to the gens.
 
The earliest authentic accounts which we have of the Greeks represent them as composed of the Doric tribes, who were Hellenes, and the Ionians, who were of Pelasgic origin. The Dorians were a conservative people, exclusive in their tastes and intolerant of innovations, while the Ionians, who occupied the seacoasts and the adjacent islands, were restless, fond of novelty, and not averse to intercourse with surrounding nations.
 
Of the original inhabitants of Rome, it is observed that they consisted of wandering tribes, bands of outlaws, and refugees from various countries. Concerning the true origin of these peoples, however, and of the history of their earliest settlements, they themselves were evidently ignorant, and the fragmentary accounts of them which have been preserved to us, when viewed independently of the light reflected upon them by recent investigation, furnish but a dim picture in the outline of which the most prominent figures appear only as245 indistinct shadows or as objects without definite shape. It is true there was no lack of myths and traditions which had come down to the Greeks and Romans as genuine history, and which were doubtless regarded by them as trustworthy accounts of their ancestors. Theseus who united the Attic tribes, and Romulus who founded Rome, were heroes in whom the divine and human were so nicely adjusted and so evenly balanced that the history of their earthly career presents no shade of error either in public or in private life. Indeed, both had sprung from immortal sources, and their exploits were such as might be expected from the mythical heroes of a forgotten age.
 
Although Greek society when it first came under our observation was under gentile organization, the gens had passed out of its archaic stage. This ancient institution, which had carried humanity through to civilization, was gradually losing its vitality; it had lost its efficiency as a governing agency, and was about to give place to political institutions.
 
With the facts at present accessible regarding peoples in the lower and middle stages of barbarism, the various steps in the growth of government as administered in the upper or latter stage of barbarism are clearly observed; also by close attention to the conditions surrounding extant peoples in the latter stage of barbarism and the opening ages of civilization, the processes involved in the transfer of society from gentile to political246 institutions are easily traced, together with the principal ideas and motives underlying the growth of all the institutions belonging to early historic nations.
 
Until civilization was reached the gens constituted the unit of organized society. This fact, however, until a comparatively recent time, seems to have been overlooked. Without attempting to explain the origin of the gens and phratry as they existed in Greece, Mr. Grote observes: “The legislator finds them pre-existing, and adapts or modifies them to answer some national scheme.” Unacquainted as this writer evidently was with the construction of primitive society, he failed to observe that originally, in Greece, all the powers of the legislator himself were derived from and circumscribed by the gens. Indeed, that this organization upon which the superstructure of Grecian society rested was the original source whence proceeded all social privileges and all military rights and obligations, is a condition which until a comparatively recent time has been overlooked. While discussing the relations of the family to the gens, the gens to the phratry, and the phratry to the tribe, Mr. Grote says: “The basis of the whole was the house, hearth, or family—a number of which, greater or less, composed the gens, or genos.”147
 
Mr. Morgan has shown, however, that the family could not have constituted the basis of the247 gens, for the reason that the heads of families belonged to separate gentes. We are assured that the gens is much older than the monogamic family, and therefore that the latter could not have formed the basis of the gentile organization; but even had the family preceded the gens in order of development, as its members belonged to different gentes it could not have constituted the unit of the social series.
 
In order to gain a clear understanding of the processes and principles involved in the early Grecian form of government, it first becomes necessary briefly to review the various steps in the growth of the governmental functions through two ethnical periods.
 
The tribe is a community of related individuals possessed of equal rights and privileges, and bound by equal duties and responsibilities. It has been shown that in the Lower Status of barbarism the government consisted of only one power—a council of chiefs elected by the people. During the Middle Status of barbarism two powers appear,—the civil and military functions have become separated, the duties of a military commander being co-ordinated with those of a council of chiefs. The military commander, however, has not succeeded in drawing to himself the powers of a ruler or king. In the Second Status of barbarism tribes have not begun to confederate. A single tribe, its members bound together by the tie of kinship and united by common rights and responsibilities, own248ing their lands in common, and each contributing his share toward the common defence, so long as it was able to maintain its independence, had little need for an elaborate form of government. As yet no strifes engendered by envy and extreme selfishness had arisen to disturb the simplicity of their lives, or to check the development of those early principles of liberty and fraternity which were the natural inheritance of the gens. A council of chiefs elected by the gentes and receiving all its powers from the people had thus far performed all the duties of government.
 
After the Upper Status of barbarism is reached we find confederated tribes dwelling together in walled cities surrounded by embankments, and a state of affairs existing which called for a further differentiation of the functions of government, and a redistribution of the powers and responsibilities of the people. In process of time, with the accumulation of property in masses in the hands of the few, and the consequent rise of an aristocracy, a government founded on wealth, or on a territorial basis, rather than on the personal relations of an individual to his gens, was demanded; and, finally, those principles, rights, and privileges which constitute a pure democracy, and which had always formed the basis of gentile institutions were gradually ignored; that personal influence which was originally exercised by each and every gentilis being transferred to a privileged class—a class which controlled the wealth, and at the head of249 which was the military commander or basileus. Such was the condition of Grecian society as it first appears in history.
 
A comparison instituted by Mr. Morgan between the Iroquois gens and that of the Greeks shows the former at the time when it first came under European observation to have been in the archaic stage, with descent and all the rights of succession traced in the female line; while the latter, at the time designated as the heroic age, had not only changed the manner of reckoning descent from the female to the male line, but was evidently about to give place to political society which, instead of being founded on kinship, was based on property and territory, or upon a man’s relations to the township or deme in which he resided.
 
While the Iroquois tribe of Indians represents the gens in its original vitality, the Greeks appear to have reached a stage at which the archaic form of government instituted on the basis of kin was found inadequate to meet their necessities; hence the confusion arising from disputed authority, at the almost interminable struggle between the various classes which had arisen, and the evident disaffection and unrest manifest among the entire Grecian people during the ages intervening between Codrus, nearly eleven hundred years B. C., and Clisthenes, five hundred years later.
 
That degree of jealousy with which individual liberty was guarded during the earlier ages of historic Greece, that thirst for freedom, and that250 restlessness under tyranny which characterized the Grecian people throughout their entire career, are explained by the fact that prior to the age of Clisthenes they were under gentile institutions, the fundamental principles of which were liberty, equality, and justice. From all the facts which may be gathered bearing upon this subject, it is evident that although at the beginning of the historic period the Greeks had lost much of that independence which belonged to an earlier stage of human development, their institutions still partook of the character of a democracy.
 
Of the similarity of the customs and institutions of early historic Greece and those of a more primitive age we have ample evidence. In ancient Greece, as among the Iroquois tribe of Indians, “property was vested absolutely in the clan, and could not be willed away from it.”148 Not only did the members of a clan hold their property in common, but they were obliged to help, defend, support, and even avenge those of their number who required their assistance. Young females bereft of near relations were either furnished with husbands or provided with suitable portions. Descent must still have been reckoned in the female line, for foreigners admitted to citizenship were not members of any clan, neither were their descendants, unless born of women who were citizens. Citizens were enrolled in the clan and phratry of their mothers.149
 
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In the administration of the government, however, are to be noted a few important changes. The complications which had arisen as a result of the individual ownership of property, the change in the reckoning of descent from the female to the male line which followed, and the growth of the aristocratic element, had produced a corresponding change in the control and management of the government. Solicitude for the common weal, although still felt by the great mass of the people, had among the rulers given place to extreme egoism, and that association and combination of interests, which since the dawn of organized society had characterized the gens, was rapidly giving way before the love of dominion, the thirst for power, and the greed of gain—characters which in process of time came to represent the mainspring of human action.
 
With the changes which took place in the conditions of the people, it is seen that the administrative functions became still further differentiated. Co-ordinate with the Greek basileus or war-chief are to be observed not only a council of chiefs who were the heads of the gentes, but also an assembly of the people, these three governmental functions corresponding in a general way to our President, Senate, and House of Representatives.
 
The Ecclesia or general assembly at Sparta was originally composed of all the free males who dwelt within the city. Although this body originated no measures, it was invested with authority to252 adopt or reject any proposed legislation or plan of action devised by the chiefs. “All changes in the constitution or laws, and all matters of great public import, as questions of peace or war, of alliances, and the like, had to be brought before it for decision.”150 Thus may be observed the precautions which during the latter stages of barbarism had been taken to guard the rights of the people, and to insure them against individual and class usurpation.
 
Curtius assures us that the Dorian people
 
did not feel as if they were placed in a foreign state, but they were the citizens of their own—not merely the objects of legislation, but also participants in it, for they only obeyed such statutes as they themselves had agreed to.151
 
Although Mr. Grote would have us believe that the assembly of the people was simply a “listening agora,”152 it is plain that it was originally invested with sufficient power to protect the people against despotism. In the further differentiation of the administrative functions the powers of the subordinate officers are all drawn from the sum of the powers invested in the three principal branches of the government, the ill-defined duties of each giving rise to those unabated dissensions and fierce and unrelenting strifes which in course of time became such a fruitful source of devastation and bloodshed.
 
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From what is known at the present time regarding Greek society prior to the age of Theseus, it is not at all likely that it was organized on monarchial principles, or that any form of government prevailed in Greece other than that of a military democracy. It is true that by most of the writers who have dealt with the subject of the government of the early Greeks, the basileus has been designated as king, and that he has been invested by them with all the insignia of a modern monarch. In later times, however, with a better understanding of the principles underlying early society, this view of the matter is seen to be false. Mr. Morgan, a writer who as we have seen has given much attention to the constitution of gentile society, informs us that in the Lower and also in the Middle Status of barbarism the office of chief was elective or during good behaviour, “for this limitation follows from the right of the gens to depose from office.”153
 
When descent was in the female line this office descended either to a brother of the deceased chief or to a sister’s son, but later, when descent began to be traced in the male line, the eldest son was usually elected to succeed his father. Upon this subject Mr. Morgan says further:
 
It cannot be claimed, on satisfactory proof, that the oldest son of the basileus took the office, upon the demise of his father, by absolute hereditary right....254 The fact that the oldest, or one of the sons, usually succeeded, which is admitted, does not establish the fact in question; because by usage he was in the probable line of succession by a free election from a constituency. The presumption on the face of Grecian institutions is against succession to the office of basileus by hereditary right; and in favour either of a free election, or of a confirmation of the office by the people through their recognized organization, as in the case of the Roman rex. With the office of basileus transmitted in the manner last named, the government would remain in the hands of the people. Because without an election or confirmation he could not assume the office; and because, further, the power to elect or confirm implies the reserved right to depose.154
 
There is no lack of evidence at the present time going to prove that all these early tribes were originally organized on thoroughly democratic principles, and that there never was any dignity conferred on the leader of the early Grecian hosts answering to the present definition of king; also that prior to the time of Romulus, no chieftain of the Latin tribes was ever invested with sufficient authority to have constituted him an imperial ruler. The term basileus, as applied to a leader of a military democracy in the early ages of Grecian history, doubtless implies simply the war-chief of the primitive tribe, an officer chosen from among the chiefs of the gentes as a leader of the hosts in battle, but as claiming no civil functions, and as255 possessing no authority outside the office of military chieftain.
 
The Homeric writings, which contain the earliest direct information which we have of the Greeks, and in which are doubtless mirrored forth a tolerably correct picture of the customs, institutions, and manners of this people, when read by the light of more recently developed facts relative to the early constitution of society, are invested with new interest, and a fresh charm and a new significance are added to every detail connected with the narrative. As to the extent of authority attached to the office of military leader among the Greeks, Homer has given us a fair illustration in the person of Agamemnon—“shepherd of the people.” That the position of this chieftain differs widely from that occupied by the king of succeeding ages is apparent. At the outset we find the injured Achilles, after he has taunted the chieftain with being the &ld............