The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

The founding of Rome was the work of three different gentes who bore the marks of an original ancestor, but who quickly intermixed with one another. Fathers passed inheritances to their children or other males within the familial line. Marriage took place outside the gens, while the gens enjoyed access to common land and promises of mutual protection from fellow members. Adoption could secure new members, and all offices, even that of the king, were elected. A woman who married into a gens became a member of that gens and could inherit her husband’s property upon his death, but would be expected to choose a new husband from within her deceased husband’s gens. Despite being a much looser system than the Iroquois, the unit of the gens endured for centuries in Rome, with membership in a gens essential for citizenship. The Roman Senate originated as a council of elders from various gentes (the term senatus in Latin derives from senex, meaning “old man”). Rome sometimes conferred temporary military leadership on individuals from outside the Roman gentes but gave them “no civil authority whatever, nor any power over the life, liberty, and property of citizens” (162).