PATRIARCHATE. (I) The rule or juris diction of a father. (2) Any social group, as a family, a clan, or a tribe, living under the rule of a father Or eldest male member of the group. The term stands for an important stage in the development of human society. and for an im portant theory commonly called the patriarchal theory. In nomadic communities, and often in simple agricultural populations, there are found compound families, in which two or three gen erations of relatives, including many brethren with their wives and children, live together under the rule of the eldest male, and in the common ownership of a household property. The society of the ancient Hebrews in the very early days is described in the Old Testament as patriarchal. The nomadic tribes of the Arabian desert and of the steppes of Central Asia are patriarchal now. The family and clan organization of the ancient Greeks and of the ancient Romans was pa triarchal, and a large proportion of the Slavic population of Russia and of Southeastern Aus tria is patriarchal still. In its simplest form the patriarchal theory is stated by Aristotle in the opening pages of the The Politics. Society is represented as springing from a single family, consisting of a man and his wife and children. The children and children's children continue to live with the first father, acknowledging him as chief or patriarch as long as he lives. On his death his descendants divide into as many fam ilies as he has sons with offspring. Each such son becomes the patriarch of a new compound family. In the course of time many such related families, living in one district and speaking one tongue, become a tribe. Tribes enlarging divide, hut if they do not separate too far they presently confederate and become a nation. This simple theory underwent great modification through the researches of Sir Henry Sumner Maine, who in Ancient Law (London. 1861) showed that the
patriarchal family of the Romans was a partly natural, partly artificial group held together by the supreme power (potestas) of the eldest male. :Membership in the group might be acquired through adoption as well as by actual descent from the first father, and it could not be acquired through blood relationship on the side of the mother. Neither males nor females not subject to the father's power were accounted of the group, and property descended only through kinship in the male line. The group was thus essentially not a compound family, but, rather. a clan or gene. (See GENs.) Maine attempted to prove in this work, and later in Early Law and Custom (Lon don, 1853), that this highly artificial patriarchal system had been general among Aryan peoples. A destructive criticism of Maine's theories by John F. McLennan, The Patriarchal Theory, edited and completed by Donald McLennan, was put forth (London) in 18S5. In this work it was shown that the patriarchal family has every where been preceded by the clan and family sys tem based on kinship through females, and that the true patria potestas has been of exceptional occurrence, even after the patriarchal system has been established. Substantially the same conclu sions are maintained by W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (London, 1885). An exceedingly interesting and instruc tive account of the economic aspect of patriarchal institutions, especially in Slavic communitie:, is found in Laveleye's De la pro ywiae et de sea formes ywimitires (Paris. 1874 : translated. Primitire Property, London, 1878). See MATRIARCHATE; MARRIAGE.