Note 276 — Chapter X · - THE INSTITUTION OF GRECIAN POLITICAL SOCIETY.

The Latin tribus = tribe, signified originally “a third part,” and was used to designate a third part of the people when composed of three tribes; but in course of time, after the Latin tribes were made local instead of consanguine, like the Athenian local tribes, the term tribe lost its numerical quality, and came, like the phylon of Cleisthenes to be a local designation.—Vide Mommsen’s Hist. of Rome, l. c., i, 71.