Notes on the Athenian ΓΕΝΗ

D. P. Costello

doi:10.2307/627301

Notes on the Athenian ΓΕΝΗ

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013

D. P. Costello

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D. P. Costello: Affiliation:
University College of the South West, Exeter

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Ancient authorities agree in placing the division of the people into tribes, phratries and gene among the most primitive institutions of Athens. The question presents itself, Were all the citizens enrolled in all of these organisations, or were some sections of the people excluded from any or all of them? On the answer given to this question depends to some extent the view to be taken of the origin of this triple classification.

The prevailing opinion is that, whereas tribes and phratries embraced the whole citizen-body, the gene were the exclusive organisation of the nobles. M. Cary adduces a fragment of early Attic law to prove that the phratries contained others besides gennetai (I shall deal later with this text) and asserts, in the face of the explicit testimony of Aristotle and the lexicographers, that the genos was not a subdivision of the phratry. I can find absolutely no support in the texts for this view. Most modern authorities are so completely convinced of the aristocratic nature of the genos that they do not even try to prove it. Francotte says simply: ‘D'abord, les genê sont des institutions aristocratiques. Je ne crois pas qu'il soit nécessaire d'insister.’

Type: Research Article
Information: The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , 1938 , pp. 171 - 179

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/627301 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1938

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References

¹ CAH III, 584.

² Philochorus ap. Photium, 344.

³ Schol., Plat., Axioch., 371D, p. 465Google Scholar.

⁴ An important exception is Wade-Gery, H. T. Eupatridai, Archons and Areopagus and Studies in the Structure of Attic Society in CQ 25, 1931)Google Scholar. In support of the view that the gene were not exclusively aristocratic organisations, he quotes—unanswerably as it seems to me—the statement of Polemon (schol-Soph. O.C. 489) that ‘the Gennetai of the Genos Hesychidai performed a certain sacrifice in which no Eupatridai took part.’ He does not, however, ‘take for granted Aristotle's theory that the Gennetai had once composed the whole nation.’

⁵ La Polis Grecque, p. 11.

⁶ Atthis, p. 59.

⁷ Attische Genealogie, p. 2.

⁸ Griech. Gesch., I, i, p. 280, note 2Google Scholar.

⁹ Herodotus (V, 97) mentions 30,000 as the number of citizens in 500 B.C., but may be exaggerating somewhat for the sake of effect.

¹⁰ Aristotle, , Pol. 3, 1, 10, 1275b, cf. Ath. Pol. 21Google Scholar.

¹¹ Ath. Pol. 16.

¹² H. T. Wade-Gery (Eupatridai, Archons and Areopagus, loc. cit.) considers that the Alcmaeonidae were not agenos, but an οἰκία, a more restricted unit than the genos. The direct evidence against this view is that of Pausanias II, 18, 9 and of Hesychius and Suidas (surely the words: mean ‘Alcmaeonidae: from the AJcmaeon contemporary with Theseus’). His argument is that the Alcmaeonidae, being few enough to share in the wealth given to Alcmaeon by Croesus and to Megacles II by Cleisthenes of Sicyon, and also to be involved in the curse of Cylon, must have been too few in number to constitute a genos. It is indisputable that the Alcmaeonidae who play a great part in history are members of a single οἰκία (see Hdt. VI, 125); but this is no reason to reject the testimony of the ancient authorities who state that there did exist an Alcmaeonid genos. I believe that the prominence of this particular family within the genos was largely due to the wealth acquired by its members at Sardis and Sicyon; the words applied to Pericles by Plutarch, (Vit. Per. 3)Google Scholar— show that gene in general, and the Alcmaeonid genos in particular, did contain more and less distinguished families. As to the curse of Cylon, if it could be suggested, aoo years after, that it was still operative (against Pericles), and if it was made retroactive to include the buried ancestors of the Alcmaeonidae, it does not seem unlikely that it should have included the gennetai contemporary with Megacles the archon. The curse, incidentally, probably accounts for the solidarity of the Alcmaeonid genos in later times, when for most of the Athenian citizens the genos had ceased to mean much. Cp. Ferguson, W. S. in Hesperia, VII, p. 43, n. 3Google Scholar.

¹³ Nobody would maintain that Themistocles was a member of the aristocracy— (Plutarch, , Vit. Them. IGoogle Scholar)—but (ibid).

¹⁴ Why, then, have almost all historians taken for granted that only the ‘nobility’ of Athens could boast of membership in the gene? The reason is partly to be found in a disregard of development in time of the organisations under discussion, and partly in analogies, conscious or not, with mediaeval Europe. There, certainly, only the nobles were able to trace descent back over several generations; but we have no proof that the cause which led them to do so—the need to establish their place in the feudal system and their hereditary right to exploit land and serfs—ever did exist in Greece. Attica at any rate never knew a feudal system; and those who have assumed that only the Athenian aristocrats could trace their descent from a remote ancestor never seem to have asked themselves why these ‘nobles’ should have bothered to do so.

¹⁵ Newton, , Anc. Gk. Inscr. II, 238Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Lebas-Wad, . Voy. Arch. 334Google Scholar.

¹⁷ IG. XII, 8, 267.

¹⁸ In his treatment of the problem of the origins of the Athenian gene, E. Meyer is less satisfactory than usual. He admits (Gesch. des. Alt. III, 278Google Scholar) that it is the fixation of a people to the soil and the rise of property in land that produce economic, and hence social and political, inequality. Again, it was in-equality of property which led to the rise of an aristocracy (p. 279). He accepts the view that at a later date the gene included the whole citizen-body, but insists that the genos was originally a purely aristocratic organisation (p. 283). The question which must be answered is, How, then, did the rest of the citizens win a place inside the gene? And the answer is astonishing: it was the settling down of the people which caused the extension of the genos-system in the whole population (p. 286). Why? Apparently the very fact which, by producing economic inequality, led to the creation of an aristocracy with an exclusive clan-system, induced the aristocrats to abandon their exclusiveness and to share with the despised commoners that which was the hallmark of their privileges (das Kennzeichen des Adels—p. 283). To me, this does not seem to make sense.

¹⁹ For all this see G. Davy, Des Clans aux Empires.

²⁰ Op. cit., p. 116.

²¹ See Seltman, Athens, its History and Coinage.

^21a W. S. Ferguson (op. cit. p. 24) asserts the complete artificiality of the genos, but quotes in support of his view only the late authorities Harpocration, Pollux and the Etym. Mag. While admitting the possible value of such authorities on points of fact, I distrust very much their attempts at explanation of the origins of institutions, such explanation being largely based merely on deductions from the contemporary condition of these institutions. The use of the comparative method has, I believe, given us a truer notion of the nature and origin (though not, of course, of the details) of the ancient social units than the Greeks of the Classical and post-Classical eras had.

²² Op. cit., p. 585.

²³ R. Firth, Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Maori.

²⁴ Not, of course, that this precludes retouchings of and additions to a genealogy in particular cases (see E. Meyer, op. cit., III. 284).

²⁵ Art. Genos in Darem.–Sag.

²⁶ V, 26–8.

²⁷ Cf. Glotz, , Solidarité de la Famille, p. 17Google Scholar.

²⁸ Op. cit., p. 266.

²⁹ Cf. Glotz, , Histoire Grecque, Vol. I, p. 406Google Scholar.

³⁰ Incidentally, it was this which wrecked the old equalitarian kinship system, not, as Francotte thinks, the dispersion of members of the same units over the face of Attica. Even after the deme had replaced the genos as the basic unit of the State, membership of the deme was hereditary, and members of the same deme did not by any means necessarily inhabit the same district. Athens never developed completely the system of classification by domicile.

³¹ See Glotz, (Hist. Gr., p. 128)Google Scholar for the privileges accorded to the βασιλεύς.

³² G. Davy, describing the conditions under which social classes arise in a primitive society, says (op. cit., pp. 122 f.), ‘Que faut-il faire pour être initié aux rites de la société et possédé par ses esprits, bref, pour être membre de la confrérie? … Ce qu'il faut faire c'est essentiellement acheter ce droit, car il va à la richesse. Et c'est là la grande différence avec le clan, dans lequel on entre par la naissance.’

³³ Ath. Pol., 20.

³⁴ That in other Greek states, too, the genos was not an aristocratic cadre is shown by Aristotle's remark on the Cretan constitution (Pol. 1272a) . In Crete, too, the oligarchy did not include all the gene, but embraced only a section of them.

³⁵ Ath. Pol., 7.

³⁶ By Adcock, in CAH IV, 45Google Scholar.

³⁷ Vit. Sol., 24.

³⁸ Photius, indeed, says ‘.’ The term ὀργεῶνες was applied in later times to those phrators who were not members of gene, but this very definition shows that it could be applied in quite a general manner to members of religious associations, and there is no reason to take it here in that specific sense.

³⁹ Ath. Pol., 20.

⁴⁰ Hdt. V, 72.

⁴¹ Myres, J. L. (Art. Cleisthenes in Herodotus, Mélanges Glotz)Google Scholar seeks to show that in Cleisthenes' day the term ἑταιρεία meant something like the early Roman familia—a genos with accretions of metics and freedmen under the προστασία of the head of the genos. He suggests that the mass of foreigners and freedmen who were ultimately given citizen-rights by Cleisthenes had been formally attached in this way to the Peisistratid genos; that after the fall of the tyrants Cleisthenes tried to win the now-unattached mass of ‘clients’ to his genos, and that it was only after failing in this that he proceeded to the reform of the constitution.

However, the relation of the Athenian metic to his προστάτης was not that of the Roman cliens to his patronus. The clientes were an adjunct of the family taking part in the gentile ‘sacra,’ and, generally, were in the power of the paterfamilias; but there is nothing to show that προστασία was anything beyond a temporary relationship between individuals. The relevant texts do not go much farther back than the fourth century, but from them it is clear that at that time the metics did not form groups in close connexion with the gene. In general, the State dealt directly with the metic, and protected him in return for the services which he performed to the State: ‘Le prostate était le citoyen d'un dème qui présentait a ce dème le nouveau métèque et le faisait inscrire sur ses registres, après quoi ses fonctions cessaient, et le métèque était en possession de tous ses droits’ (M. Clerc, Metoikoi in Dar.–Sag.). What the exact legal status of metics was in the sixth century is a matter for pure conjecture, but nothing in the texts indicates the existence of anything like the Roman clientela, an integral part of the patrician familia. There is, then, no reason to suppose that Athens knew any institution corresponding to the Roman familia, or that the term ἑταιρεία can bear the meaning which Myres assigns to it.

Furthermore, what produced the civil strife after the close of the tyranny was not merely the ambition of one or two prominent men. It was the threat made by the oligarchs to the civil existence of those who had enjoyed de facto citizenship under the tyrants. It was not that Peisistratus had been προστάτης in the later, precise sense of the term, of the numerous metics whom his rule had attracted to Athens; he had actually allowed them citizen-rights (which metics under the tutelage of a προστάτης could never enjoy). He had not attached them to his genos as clients, but had (irregularly) made them citizens of Athens. And citizens had no need of a προστάτης. I cannot believe that the most important event in Athenian constitutional history was due simply to the pique of one leading politician. After all, the people is not something passive, to be moulded this way and that by its leaders, but is the active force which makes history. To make Cleisthenes solely responsible for the creation of Athenian democracy, instead of the spokesman and to some extent the guide of the people, seems to me to degrade history to the level of a game.

⁴² IG III¹ (Ed. Min.), 1325.

⁴³ . .