h it
the adoption into the gens.

9. The right to elect and depose chiefs is not mentioned anywhere. But
inasmuch as during the first years of Rome's existence all offices were
filled by election or nomination, from the king downward, and as the
curiae elected also their own priests, we are justified in assuming the
same in regard to gentile chiefs (principes)--no matter how well
established the rule of choosing the candidates from the same family
have been.

Such were the constitutional rights of a Roman gens. With the exception
of the completed transition to paternal law, they are the true image of
the rights and duties of an Iroquois gens. Here, also, "the Iroquois is
still plainly visible."

How confused the ideas of our historians, even the most prominent of
them, are when it comes to a discussion of the Roman gens, is shown by
the following example: In Mommsen's treatise on the Roman family names
of the Republican and Augustinian era (Roemische Forschungen, Berlin,
1864, Vol. I.) he writes: "The gentile name was not only borne by all
male gentiles including all adopted and wards, except, of course, the
slaves, but also by the women.... The tribe (so Mommsen translates gens)
is a common organization resulting from a common--actual, assumed or
even invented--ancestor and united by common rites, burial grounds and
customs of inheritance. All free individuals, hence women also, may and
must claim membership in them. But the definition of the gentile name of
the married women offers some difficulty. This is indeed obviated, as
long as women were not permitted to marry any one but their gentiles.
And we have proofs that for a long time the women found it much more
difficult to marry outside than inside of the gens. This right of
marrying outside, the gentis enuptio, was still bestowed as a personal
privilege and reward during the sixth century.... But wherever such
outside marriages occurred in primeval times, the woman must have been
transferred to the tribe of her husband. Nothing is more certain than
that by the old religious marriage woman was completely adopted into
the legal and sacramental group of her husband and divorced from her
own. Who does not know that the married woman releases her active and
passive right of inheritance in favor of her gentiles, but enters the
legal group of her husband, her children and his gentiles? And if her
husband adopts her as his child into his family, how can she remain
sepa