Note 291 — Chapter V · THE FOUR KINGDOMS.

Cæsar says of the Britons of the interior, ‘Uxores habent deni duodenique inter se communes, et maxime fratres cum fratribus, parentesque cum liberis; sed, si qui sunt ex his nati, eorum habentur liberi, quo primum virgo quæque deducta est.’—(B. v. c. 14.) Dio, as reported by Xiphiline, attributes a similar custom to the Caledonians and Mæatæ, when he says that they have wives in common, and rear the whole of their progeny. It is obvious that such a custom must have given rise to the feeling, that the only certainty of a child belonging to a particular family was to look to the mother, not the father, as the link which connected him with it; and that the Pictish system would naturally spring out of it; but it is probable Cæsar and Dio represented a custom as it appeared to them, without understanding it.