gens went so far back that the gentiles could no longer actually ascertain their mutual kinship, except in a limited number of more recent common ancestors. The name itself was the proof of a common descent and sufficed always except in cases of adoption. To actually dispute all kinship between gentiles after the manner of Grote and Niebuhr, who thus transform the gens into a purely hypothetical and fictitious creation of the brain, is indeed worthy of "ideal" scientists, that is book worms. Because the relation of the generations, especially on the advent of monogamy, is removed to the far distance, and the reality of the past seems reflected in phantastic imaginations, therefore the brave old philistines concluded and conclude that the imaginary pedigree created real gentes!"
The phratry was, as among the Americans, a mother-gens comprising several daughter gentes, and often traced them all to the same ancestor. According to Grote "all contemporaneous members of the phratry of Hekataeos were descendants in the sixteenth degree of one and the same divine ancestor." All the gentes of this phratry were therefore literally brother gentes. The phratry is mentioned by Homer as a military unit in that famous passage where Nestor advises Agamemnon: "Arrange the men by phratries and tribes so that phratry may assist phratry, and tribe the tribe." The phratry has the right and the duty to prosecute the death of a phrator, hence in former times the duty of blood revenge. It has, furthermore, common religious rites and festivals. As a matter of fact, the development of the entire Grecian mythology from the traditional old Aryan cult of nature was essentially due to the gentes and phratries and took place within them. The phratry had an official head (phratriarchos) and also, according to De Coulanges, meetings and binding resolutions, a jurisdiction and administration. Even the state of a later period, while ignoring the gens, left certain public functions to the phratry.
The tribe consisted of several kindred phratries. In Attica there were four tribes of three phratries each; the number of gentes in each phratry was