Gens
(from the root gen of
geno=gigno). A Roman
family in the widest sense of the word, descended on the male line from a common ancestor, and
therefore bearing a common name. So long as the patricians were the only citizens with full
rights, there could of course be no gentes not patrician. The oldest gentes belonged to the
tribes of the Latin Ramnes and the Sabine Tities. Besides these there were the gentes
belonging to the Alban families, brought to Rome by King Tullus Hostilius; and embodied by the
other gentes in the community as a third tribe, the Luceres. These, the most ancient, were
called
gentes maiores as distinguished from the
gentes
minores, which included the plebeians whom Tarquinius Priscus raised to the rank of
patricians. There were in later times instances of plebeian gentes being raised to patrician
rank; but these became rarer and rarer, so that the number of patrician gentes was finally
much reduced. During the last years of the Republic we hear of only fourteen still in
existence, including thirty
familiae (or families in the narrower
sense). Many large gentes were divided into houses (
stirpes) who had a
common cognomen in addition to the name of their gens; thus the gens Cornelia included the
Cornelii Maluginenses, Cornelii Cossi, Cornelii Scipiones, Cornelii Rufini, Cornelii Lentuli,
Cornelii Dolabellae, Cornelii Cethegi, Cornelii Cinnae, Cornelii Sullae. Among the plebeians,
as among the patricians, the
familia naturally developed into a larger
circle of relationship; but gentes in the old sense were not formed by the process. Though the
plebeian had his gentile name, and afterwards his
cognomen, he had not
the real
ius gentilicium. See
Ius.
All
gentiles, or members of a gens, had a right to its common property,
which included a common burial-place. They also had a testamentary law of their own which
lasted on into the imperial period. When a member of a gens died without heirs of his body,
the next to inherit (as in the case of the plebeians) were the
agnati, or
gentiles on the male side, who could prove their relationship: failing
these, the
gentiles divided the inheritance. The existence of this law
rendered it, in old times, necessary to obtain the
consensus of the whole
gens in cases of adoption and testamentary bequest. Another consequence of it was, that it was
the duty of the
gentiles to provide a
curator for
insane persons and spendthrifts, and a guardian for minors. See
Curator.
Every gens had its meetings, at which resolutions were passed binding its individual members
in matters affecting the gens. It was a decree of the gens Manlia, for instance, which forbade
any one of its members to bear the praenomen Marcus. As every
familia,
whether patrician or plebeian, had certain sacrifices which it was bound to perform, so had
every gens, as a larger or extended
familia. All members of the gens were
entitled, and indeed bound, to take part in the
sacra gentilicia, or
common worship of the gens. These
sacra ceased to exist with the
extinction of a gens; and if a member of a gens left it, this right and duty also came to an
end. It should be added that certain public religious services were assigned to particular
gentes, that of Hercules, for instance, to the gens Pinaria. See Mommsen,
Römisches Staatsrecht, iii. i. pp. 15-22; Becker,
Handbuch, ii. 1.
