Note 102 — Chapter X · IONIC PORTION OF HELLAS. — ATHENS BEFORE SOLON.

That this was the primitive custom, and that the limitation μέχρις ἀνεψιαδῶν (Meier, De Bonis Damnat. p. 23, cites ἀνεψιαδῶν καὶ φρατόρων) was subsequently introduced (Demosth. cont. Euerg. et Mnesib. p. 1161), we may gather from the law as it stands in Demosth. cont. Makartat. p. 1069, which includes the phrators, and therefore, à fortiori, the gennêtes, or gentiles.

The same word γένος is used to designate both the circle of nameable relatives, brothers, first cousins (ἀγχιστεῖς, Demosth. cont. Makartat. c. 9, p. 1058), etc., going beyond the οἶκος,—and the quasi-family, or gens. As the gentile tie tended to become weaker, so the former sense of the word became more and more current, to the extinction of the latter. Οἱ ἐν γένει, or οἱ προσήκοντες, would have borne a wider sense in the days of Drako than in those of Demosthenes: Συγγενὴς usually belongs to γένος in the narrower sense, γεννήτης to γένος in the wider sense; but Isæus sometimes uses the former word as an exact equivalent of the latter (Orat. vii, pp. 95, 99, 102, 103, Bekker). Τριακὰς appears to be noted in Pollux as the equivalent of γένος, or gens (viii, 111), but the word does not occur in the Attic orators, and we cannot make out its meaning with certainty: the Inscription of the Deme of Peiræeus given in Boeckh (Corp. Insc. No. 101, p. 140,) rather adds to the confusion by revealing the existence of a τριακὰς constituting the fractional part of a deme, and not connected with a gens: compare Boeckh’s Comment. ad loc. and his Addenda and Corrigenda, p. 900.

Dr. Thirlwall translates γένος, house; which I cannot but think inconvenient, because that word is the natural equivalent of οἶκος,—a very important word in reference to Attic feelings, and quite different from γένος (Hist. of Greece, vol. ii, p. 14, ch. 11). It will be found impossible to translate it by any known English word which does not at the same time suggest erroneous ideas: which I trust will be accepted as my excuse for adopting it untranslated into this History.