CHAPTER IX.

THE GRECIAN PHRATRY, TRIBE AND NATION.

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.

Stephanus of Byzantium has preserved a fragment of Dikæarchus, in which an explanation of the origin of the gens, phratry and tribe is suggested. It is not full enough, with respect to either, to amount to a definition; but it is valuable as a recognition of the three stages of organization in ancient Grecian society. He uses patry (πάτρα) in the place of gens (γένος), as Pindar did in a number of instances, and Homer occasionally. The passage may be rendered: “Patry is one of three forms of social union among the Greeks, according to Dikæarchus, which we call respectively, patry, phratry, and tribe. The patry comes into being when relationship, originally solitary, passes over into the second stage [the relationship of parents with children and children with parents], and derives its eponym from the oldest and chief member of the patry, as Aicidas, Pelopidas.”

“But it came to be called phatria and phratria when certain ones gave their daughters to be married into another patry. For the woman who was given in marriage participated no longer in her paternal sacred rites, but was enrolled in the patry of her husband; so that for the union, formerly subsisting by affection between sisters and brothers, there was established another union based on community of religious rites, which they denominated a phratry; and so that again, while the patry took its rise in the way we have previously mentioned, from the blood relation between parents and children and children and parents, the phratry took its rise from the relationship between brothers.”

“But tribe and tribesmen were so called from the coalescence into communities and nations so called, for each of the coalescing bodies was called a tribe.”[251]

It will be noticed that marriage out of the gens is here recognized as a custom, and that the wife was enrolled in the gens, rather than the phratry, of her husband. Dikæarchus, who was a pupil of Aristotle, lived at a time when the gens existed chiefly as a pedigree of individuals, its powers having been transferred to new political bodies. He derived the origin of the gens from primitive times; but his statement that the phratry originated in the matrimonial practices of the gentes, while true doubtless as to the practice, is but an opinion as to the origin of the organization. Intermarriages, with common religious rites, would cement the phratric union; but a more satisfactory foundation of the phratry may be found in the common lineage of the gentes of which it was composed. It must be remembered that the gentes have a history running back through the three sub-periods of barbarism into the previous period of savagery, antedating the existence even of the Aryan and Semitic families. The phratry has been shown to have appeared among the American aborigines in the Lower Status of barbarism; while the Greeks were familiar with so much only of their former history as pertained to the Upper Status of barbarism.

Mr. Grote does not attempt to define the functions of the phratry, except generally. They were doubtless of a religious character chiefly; but they probably manifested themselves, as among the Iroquois, at the burial of the dead, at public games, at religious festivals, at councils, and at the agoras of the people, where the grouping of chiefs and people would be by phratries rather than by gentes. It would also naturally show itself in the array of the military forces, of which a memorable example is given by Homer in the address of Nestor to Agamemnon.[252] “Separate the troops by tribes and by phratries, Agamemnon, so that phratry may support phratry, and tribes, tribes (κρῖν' ἄνδρας κατὰ φῦλα, κατὰ φρήτρας, Ἀγάμεμνον, ὡς φρήτρη φρήτρηφιν ἀρήγῃ, φῦλα δὲ φύλοις). If thou wilt thus act, and the Greeks obey, thou wilt then ascertain which of the commanders and which of the soldiers is a coward, and which of them may be brave, for they will fight their best.” The number from the same gens in a military force would be too small to be made a basis in the organization of an army; but the larger aggregations of the phratries and tribes would be sufficient. Two things may be inferred from the advice of Nestor: first, that the organization of armies by phratries and tribes had then ceased to be common; and secondly, that in ancient times it had been the usual plan of army organization, a knowledge of which had not then disappeared. We have seen that the Tlascalans and Aztecs, who were in the Middle Status of barbarism, organized and sent out their military bands by phratries which, in their condition, was probably the only method in which a military force could be organized. The ancient German tribes organized their armies for battle on a similar principle.[253] It is interesting to notice how closely shut in the tribes of mankind have been to the theory of their social system.

The obligation of blood revenge, which was turned at a later day into a duty of prosecuting the murderer before the legal tribunals, rested primarily upon the gens of the slain person; but it was also shared in by the phratry, and became a phratric obligation.[254] In the Eumenides of Aeschylus, the Erinnys, after speaking of the slaying of his mother by Orestes, put the question: “What lustral water of his phrators shall await him?”[255] which seems to imply that if the criminal escaped punishment final purification was performed by his phratry instead of his gens. Moreover, the extension of the obligation from the gens to the phratry implies a common lineage of all the gentes in a phratry.

Since the phratry was intermediate between the gens and the tribe, and not invested with governmental functions, it was less fundamental and less important than either of the others; but it was a common, natural and perhaps necessary stage of re-integration between the two. Could an intimate knowledge of the social life of the Greeks in that early period be recovered, the phenomena would centre probably in the phratric organization far more conspicuously than our scanty records lead us to infer. It probably possessed more power and influence than is usually ascribed to it as an organization. Among the Athenians it survived the overthrow of the gentes as the basis of a system, and retained, under the new political system, some control over the registration of citizens, the enrollment of marriages and the prosecution of the murderer of a phrator before the courts.

It is customary to speak of the four Athenian tribes as divided each into three phratries, and of each phratry as divided into thirty gentes; but this is merely for convenience in description. A people under gentile institutions do not divide themselves into symmetrical divisions and subdivisions. The natural process of their formation was the exact reverse of this method; the gentes fell into phratries, and ultimately into tribes, which reunited in a society or a people. Each was a natural growth. That the number of gentes in each Athenian phratry was thirty is a remarkable fact incapable of explanation by natural causes. A motive sufficiently powerful, such as a desire for a symmetrical organization of the phratries and tribes, might lead to a subdivision of gentes by consent until the number was raised to thirty in each of these phratries; and when the number in a tribe was in excess, by the consolidation of kindred gentes until the number was reduced to thirty. A more probable way would be by the admission of alien gentes into phratries needing an increase of number. Having a certain number of tribes, phratries and gentes by natural growth, the reduction of the last two to uniformity in the four tribes could thus have been secured. Once cast in this numerical scale of thirty gentes to a phratry and three phratries to a tribe, the proportion might easily have been maintained for centuries, except perhaps as to the number