Note 261 — Chapter II · THE SOCIAL COMPOSITION OF THE PRIMITIVE POPULUS

The idea that the primitive community is essentially illiberal with its membership is erroneous. For the mingling of conquerors and conquered, see p. 42 f. and notes. On the ethnic heterogeneity of states in general, see Gumplowicz, Rassenkampf, 181. The laws of Solon granted citizenship to alien residents who were in perpetual exile from their own country, or who had settled with their families in Attica with a view to plying their trade; Plut. Sol. 24. Under his laws, too, a valid marriage could be contracted between an Athenian and an alien; Hdt. vi. 130. The Athenians, like the Romans, believed that many of their noble families were of foreign origin. In Ireland “strangers settling in the district, conducting themselves well, and intermarrying with the clan, were after a few generations indistinguishable from it;” Ginnell, Brehon Laws, 103. Nearly the same rule holds for South Wales; Seebohm, Tribal System in Wales, 131. To the Germans before their settlement within the empire the idea of an exclusive community must have been foreign; for as yet the individual was but loosely attached to his tribe. Persons of many tribes were united in the comitatus of a chief; the two halves of a tribe often fought on opposite sides in war; a tribe often chose its chief from another tribe. Intermarriage among the tribes was common, even between Germans and Sarmatians. A single tribe often split into several independent tribes, and conversely new tribes were formed of the most diverse elements; Seeck, Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt, i. 209 with notes; Kaufmann, Die Germanen der Urzeit, 136 f. Under these circumstances the primitive German community cannot be described as exclusive. In like manner our sources unanimously testify to the liberality of early Rome in granting the citizenship to strangers. It is no longer possible to oppose to this authority the objection that such generosity does not accord with primitive conditions.