The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State by Frederick Engels (classic novels .txt) 📕

is principally, if not exclusively, founded on a single much disputed passage of Livy (Book xxxix, c. 19). According to this passage, the senate decreed in the year 568 of the city, i. e., 186 B. C., (uti Feceniae Hispallae datió, deminutio, gentis enuptio, tutoris optio idem esset quasi ei vir testamento dedisset; utique ei ingenuo nubere liceret, neu quid ei qui eam duxisset, ob id fraudi ignominiaeve esset)—that Fecenia Hispalla shall have the right to dispose of her property, to diminish it, to marry outside of the gens, to choose a guardian, just as if her (late) husband had conferred this right on her by testament; that she shall be permitted to marry a freeman and that for the man who marries her this shall not constitute a misdemeanor or a shame.

Without a doubt Fecenia, a freed slave, here obtains permission to marry outside of the gens. And equally doubtless the husband here has the right to confer on his wife by testament the right to marry outside of the gens after his death. But outside of which gens?

If a woman had to intermarry in the gens, as Mommsen assumes, then she remained in this gens after her marriage. But in the first place, this assertion of an endogamous gens must be proven. And in the second place, if the women had to intermarry in the gens, then the men had to do the same, otherwise there could be no marriage. Then we arrive at the conclusion that the man could bequeath a right to his wife, which he did not have for himself. This is a legal impossibility. Mommsen feels this very well, and hence he supposes: "The marriage outside of the gens most probably required not only the consent of the testator, but of all gentiles." (Page 10, footnote.) This is not only a very daring assertion, but contradicts also the clear wording of the passage. The senate gives her this right as a proxy of her husband; they expressly give her no more and no less than her husband could have given her, but what they do give is an absolute right, independent of all limitations, so that, if she should make use of it, her new husband shall not suffer in consequence. The senate even instructs the present and future consuls and praetors to see that no inconvenience arise to her from the use of this right. Mommsen's supposition is therefore absolutely inadmissible.

Then again: suppose a woman married a man from another gens, but remained in her own gens. According to the passage quoted above, her husband would then have had the right to permit his wife to marry outside of her own gens. That is, he would have had the right to make provisions in regard to the affairs of a gens to which he did not belong at all. The thing is so utterly unreasonable that we need not lose any words about it.

Nothing remains but to assume that the woman in her first marriage wedded a man from another gens and thereby became a member of her husband's gens. Mommsen admits this for such cases. Then the whole matter at once explains itself. The woman, torn away from her old gens by her marriage and adopted into the gentile group of her husband, occupies a peculiar position in the new gens. She is now a gentile, but not a kin by blood. The manner of her entrance from the outset excludes all prohibition of intermarrying in the gens, into which she has come by marriage. She is adopted into the family relations of the gens and inherits some of the property of her husband when he dies, the property of a gentile. What is more natural than that this property should remain in the gens and that she should be obliged to marry a gentile of her husband and no other? If, however, an exception is to be made, who is so well entitled to authorize her as her first husband who bequeathed his property to her? At the moment when he bequeathes on her a part of his property and simultaneously gives her permission to transfer this property by marriage or as a result of marriage to a strange gens, he still is the owner of this property, hence he literally disposes of his personal property. As for the woman and her relation to the gens of her husband, it is he who by an act of his own free will—the marriage—introduced her into his gens. Therefore it seems quite natural that he should be the proper person to authorize her to leave this gens by another marriage. In short, the matter appears simple and obvious, as soon as we discard the absurd conception of an endogamous Roman gens and accept Morgan's originally exogamous gens.

There is still another view which has probably found the greatest number of advocates. According to them the passage in Livy only means "that freed slave girls (libertae) cannot without special permission, e gente enubere (marry outside of the gens) or undertake any of the steps which, together with capitis deminutio minima[25] (the loss of family rights) would lead to a transfer of the liberta to another gens." (Lange, Römische Alterthümer, Berlin, 1856, I, p. 185, where our passage from Livy is explained by a reference to Huschke.) If this view is correct, then the passage proves still less for the relations of free Roman women, and there is so much less ground for speaking of their obligation to intermarry in the gens.

The expression enuptio gentis (marriage outside of the gens) occurs only in this single passage and is not found anywhere else in the entire Roman literature. The word enubere (to marry outside) is found only three times likewise in Livy, and not in reference to the gens. The phantastic idea that Roman women had to intermarry in the gens owes its existence only to this single passage. But it cannot be maintained. For either the passage refers to special restrictions for freed slave women, in which case it proves nothing for free women (ingenuae). Or it applies also to free women, in which case it rather proves that the women as a rule married outside of the gens and were transferred by their marriage to their husbands' gens. This would be a point for Morgan against Mommsen.

Almost three hundred years after the foundation of Rome the gentile bonds were still so strong that a patrician gens, the Fabians, could obtain permission from the senate to undertake all by itself a war expedition against the neighboring town of Veii. Three hundred and six Fabians are said to have marched and to have been killed from ambush. Only one boy was left behind to propagate the gens.

Ten gentes, we said, formed a phratry, named curia. It was endowed with more important functions than the Grecian phratry. Every curia had its own religious rites, sacred possessions and priests. The priests of one curia in a body formed one of the Roman clerical collegiums. Ten curiae formed a tribe which probably had originally its own elected chief—leader in war and high priest—like the rest of the Latin tribes. The three tribes together formed the populus Romanus, the Roman people.

Hence nobody could belong to the Roman people, unless he was a member of a Roman gens, and thus a member of a curia and tribe. The first constitution of the Roman people was as follows. Public affairs were conducted by the Senate composed, as Niebuhr was the first to state correctly, of the chiefs of the three hundred gentes. Because they were the elders of the gentes they were called patres, fathers, and as a body senatus, council of elders, from senex, old. Here also the customary choice of men from the same family of the gens brought to life the first hereditary nobility. These families were called patricians and claimed the exclusive right to the seats in the senate and to all other offices. The fact that in the course of time the people admitted this claim so that it became an actual privilege is confirmed by the legendary report that Romulus bestowed the rank of patrician and its privileges on the first senators. The senate, like the Athenian boulê, had to make the final decision in many affairs and to undertake the preliminary discussion of more important matters, especially of new laws. These were settled by the public meeting, the so-called comitia curiata (assembly of curiae.) The people met in curiae, probably grouped by gentes, and every one of the thirty curiae had one vote. The assembly of curiae adopted or rejected all laws, elected all higher officials including the rex (so-called king), declared war (but the senate concluded peace), and decided as a supreme court, on appeal, all cases involving capital punishment of Roman citizens. By the side of the senate and the public meeting stood the rex, corresponding to the Grecian basileus, and by no means, such an almost absolute king as Mommsen would have it.[26] The rex was also a military leader, a high priest and a chairman of certain courts. He had no other functions, nor any power over life, liberty and property of the citizens, except such as resulted from his disciplinary power as military leader or from his executive power as president of a court. The office of rex was not hereditary. On the contrary, he was elected, probably on the suggestion of his predecessor, by the assembly of curiae and then solemnly invested by a second assembly. That he could also be deposed is proved by the fate of Tarquinius Superbus.

As the Greeks at the time of the heroes, so the Romans at the time of the so-called kings lived in a military democracy based on and developed from a constitution of gentes, phratries and tribes. What though the curiae and tribes were partly artificial formations, they were moulded after the genuine and spontaneous models of a society from which they originated and that still surrounded them on all sides. And though the sturdy patrician nobility had already gained ground, though the reges attempted gradually to enlarge the scope of their functions—all this does not change the elementary and fundamental character of the constitution, and this alone is essential.

Meantime the population of the city of Rome and of the Roman territory, enlarged by conquest, increased partly by immigration, partly through the inhabitants of the annexed districts, Latins most of them. All these new members of the state (we disregard here the clients) stood outside of the old gentes, curiae and tribes and so did not form a part of the populus Romanus, the Roman people proper. They were personally free, could own land, had to pay taxes and were subject to military service. But they were not eligible to office and could neither take part in the assembly of curiae nor in the distribution of conquered state lands. They made up the mass of people excluded from all public rights, the plebs. By their continually growing numbers, their military training and armament they became a threat for the old populus who now closed their ranks hermetically against all new elements. The land seems to have been about evenly divided between populus and plebs, while the mercantile and industrial wealth, though as yet not very considerable, may have been mainly in the hands of the plebs.

In view of the utter darkness that enwraps the whole legendary origin of Rome's historical beginning—a darkness that was rendered still more intense by the rationalistic and overofficious interpretations and reports of the juristically trained authors that wrote on the subject—it is impossible to make any definite statements about the time, the course and the motive of the revolution that put an end to the old gentile constitution. We