is thus an exact replica within the _gotra_
of the primitive totem clan which was exogamous and constituted by
the tie of living and eating together. Similarly marriage at Rome
was prohibited to seven degrees of relationship through males within
the _gens_, [178] and this exogamous group of kinsmen appear to have
been the body of agnatic kinsmen within the _gens_ who are referred
to by Sir H. Maine as a man's ultimate heirs. [179] At Athens, when
a contest arose upon a question of inheritance, the proper legal
evidence to establish kinship was the proof that the alleged ancestor
and the alleged heir observed a common worship and shared in the
same repast in honour of the dead. [180] The distant heirs were thus
a group within the Athenian g'enoc corresponding to the Sapindas and
bound by the same tie of eating together. Professor Hearn states that
there is no certain evidence that the Roman _gens_ and Greek g'enoc
were originally exogamous, but we find that of the Roman matrons whose
names are known to us none married a husband with her own Gentile name;
and further, that Plutarch, in writing of the Romans, says that in
former days men did not marry women of their own blood or, as in the
preceding sentence he calls them, kinswomen suggen'idac, just as in
his own day they did not marry their aunts or sisters; and he adds
that it was long before they consented to wed with cousins. [181]
Professor Hearn's opinion was that the Hindu _gotra_, the Roman
_gens_ and the Greek g'enoc were originally the same institution,
the exogamous clan with male descent, and all the evidence available,
as well as the close correspondence in other respects of early Hindu
institutions with those of the Greek and Latin cities would tend to
support this view.

75. Comparison of Hindu society with that of Greece and Rome. The
_gens_.

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 Cite 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
g'enh or clans ended in _ides_ or _ades_, as Butades, Phytalides,
which h