an who he is, and he will answer by giving his
own name, that of his mother, and so on in the female line.
Moreover, if a free woman marry a man who is a slave, their
children are free citizens; but if a free man marry a foreign
woman, or cohabit with a concubine, even though he be the
first person in the state, the children forfeit all rights
of citizenship.[116]

Herodotus also relates that when Darius gave to the wife of
Intaphernes permission to claim the life of a single man of her
kindred, she chose her brother, saying that both husband and children
could be replaced.[117] The declaration of Antigone in Sophocles,[118]
that she would have performed for neither husband nor children the
toil which she undertook for Polynices, against the will of the
citizens, indicates that the tie of a common womb was stronger than
the social tie of marriage. The extraordinary honor, privilege,
and proprietary rights enjoyed by ancient Egyptian and Babylonian
wives[119] are traceable to an earlier maternal organization.

All ethnologists admit that descent through females has been very
widespread, but some deny that this system has been universally
prevalent at any stage of culture. Those who have diminished its
importance, however, have done so chiefly in reinforcement of their
denials of the theory of promiscuity. It has been very generally
assumed that maternal descent is due solely to uncertainty of
paternity, and that an admission that the maternal system has been
universal is practically an admission of promiscuity. Opponents
of this theory have consequently felt called upon to minimize the
importance of maternal descent.[120] But descent through females is
not, in fact, fully explained by uncertainty of parentage on the male
side. It is due to the larger social fact, including this biological
one, that the bond between mother and child is the closest in nature,
and that the group grew up about the more stationary female; and
consequently the questions of maternal descent and promiscuity are
by no means so inseparable as has commonly been assumed. We may
accept Sir Henry Maine's terse remark that "paternity is a matter
of inference, as opposed to maternity, which is a matter of
observation,"[121] without concluding that society would have been
first of all patriarchal in organization, even if paternity had been
also a matter of observation. For the association of the woman with
the child is immediat