to designate a certain well defined section
of the wandering corps, composed quite naturally of relatives. As a
result of centuries of wanderings from West to East and back again, this
term was gradually applied to the sex group itself.

There is furthermore the Gothic sibja, Anglosaxon sib, old High German
sippia, sippa, High German sippe. Old Norse has only the plural sifjar,
the relatives; the singular occurs only as the name of a goddess, Sif.

Finally, another expression occurs in the Hildebrand Song, where
Hildebrand asks Hadubrand "who is your father among the men of the
nation ... or what is your kin?" (eddo huellihhes cnuosles du sis).

If there was a common German term for gens, it was presumably the Gothic
kuni. This is not only indicated by its identity with the corresponding
term in related languages, but also by the fact that the word kuning,
German Koenig, English king, is derived from it, all of which originally
signified chief of gens or tribe. Sibja, German Sippe (relationship),
does not appear worthy of consideration. In old Norse, at least, sifjar
signifies not alone kin by blood, but also kin through marriage; hence
it comprises the members of at least two gentes, and the term sif cannot
have been applied to the gens itself.

In the order of battle, the Germans, like the Mexicans and Greeks,
arranged the horsemen as well as the wedge-like columns of the troops on
foot by gentes. Tacitus' indefinite expression, "by families and
kinships," is explained by the fact that at his time the gens had long
ceased to be a living body in Rome.

Another passage of Tacitus is decisive. There he says: "The mother's
brother regards his nephew as his son; some even hold that the bond of
blood between the maternal uncle and the nephew is more sacred and close
than that between father and son, so that when persons are demanded as
securities, the sister's son is considered a better security than the
natural son of the man whom they desire to place under bonds." Here we
have a living proof of the matriarchal, and hence natural, gens, and it
is described as a characteristic mark of the Germans.[28] If a member of
such a gens gave his own son as a security for the fulfillment of a vow
and this son became the victim of his father's breach of faith, that was
the concern of the father alone. But when the son of a sister was
sacrificed, then the most sacred gentile law was violated. The next
relative who was bound above a