The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India,...

In the admirable account of the early constitution of the city-states of Greece and Italy contained in the work of M. Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité Antique, a close resemblance may be traced with the main strata of Hindu society given earlier in this essay. The Roman state was composed of a number of gentes or clans, each gens tracing its descent from a common ancestor, whose name it usually bore. The termination of the Gentile name in ius signified descendant, as Claudius, Fabius, and so on. Similarly the names of the Athenian γένη or clans ended in ides or ades, as Butades, Phytalides, which had the same signification.182 The Gentile or clan name was the nomen or principal name, just as the personal names of the members of the totem-clans were at first connected with the totems. The members of the gens lived together on a section of the city land and cultivated it under the control of the head of the gens. The original ager Romanus is held to have been 115 square miles or about 74,000 acres,183 and this was divided up among the clans. The heads of clans originally lived on their estates and went in to Rome for the periodical feasts and other duties. The principal family or eldest branch of the gens in the descent from a common ancestor ranked above the others, and its head held the position of a petty king in the territory of the gens.

In Greece he was called ἄναξ or βασιλεύς.184 Originally the Roman Senate consisted solely of the heads of gentes, and the consuls, flamens and augurs were also chosen exclusively from them; they were known as patres; after the expulsion of the kings, fresh senators were added from the junior branches of the gentes, of which there were at this period 160, and these were known as patres conscripti185. The distinction between the eldest and junior branches of the gentes may have corresponded to the distinction between the Kshatriyas and Vaishyas, though as practically nothing is known of the constitution of the original Kshatriyas, this can only be hypothetical.