GENERATION. A simple succession of living beings in natural descent ; the age or period between one succession and another. It is not equivalent to degree. McMillan v. School Committee, 107 N. C. 609, 12 S. E. 330, 10 L. R. A. 823.
GENS (Lat.). In Roman Law. A union of families, who bore the same name, who were of an ingenuous (free) birth, ingewui, none of whose ancestors had been a slave, and who had suffered no eapitis diminutio (reduction from a superior to an inferior condition), of which there were three de grees, maxima, media, minima. The first was the reduction of a free man to the con dition of a slave, and was undergone by those who refused or neglected to be register ed at the census, who had been condemned to ignominious punishments, who refused to perform military service, or who had been taken prisoners by the enemy, though those of the last class, on recovering their liberty, could be reinstated in their rights of citizen ship. The second degree consisted in the re duction of a citizen to the condition of an alien (Latinus or peregrinus), and involved in the case of a Latinus, the loss of the right of legal marriage, but not of acquiring property, and in the case of the peregrinus, the loss of both. The third degree consisted in the change of condition of a pater lami nas into that of a ?Etna laminas, either by adoption or by legitimation.
Gentiles sunt, qui inter se eodem famine aunt; qui ab ingenuis oriund4 aunt; quorum majorum nemo servitutem servivit: qui capite non sunt de minuti. This definition is given by Cicero (Topic 6), after Screvola, the pontifex. But, notwithstanding this high authority, the question as to the organiza tion of the gots is involved in great obscurity and doubt. The definition of Festus is still more vague and unsatisfactory. He says, "Gentilis dicitur et ex eodem genere ortus, et is, qui simili famine appel latur, ut alt Cincius: Gentiles mihi sunt, qui meo famine appellantur." Gens and genus are convert ible terms; and Cicero defines the latter word, "Genus autem est quad sui similes communions quadam, specie autem differentes, ducts aut plures complectitur partes." De Oratore, 1, 42. The genus is that which comprehends two or more particulars, similar to one another by having something in com mon, but differing in species. From this it may fairly be concluded that the gene or race comprises several families, always of ingenuous birth, resem bling each other by their origin, general name,— nomen,—and common sacrifices or sacred rites,— sacra gentilitia (sui similes communion quadam), —but differing from each other by a particular name,—cognomen and agnatio (specie autem differ entes). It would seem, however, from the litigation between the Claudii and Marcellii in relation to the inheritance of the son of a freedman, reported by Cicero, that the deceased, whose succession was in controversy, belonging to the gene Claudia, for the foundation of their claim was the gentile rights,— gente; and the Marcellii (plebeians belonging to the same gene) supported their pretensions on the ground that he was the son of their freedman. This fact has been thought by some writers to contradict that part of the definition of •Scmvola and Cicero where they say, quorum majorum nemo servitutem servivit. And Niebuhr, in a note to his history, con cludes that the definition is erroneous: he says, "The claim oT the patrician Claudii is at variance with the definition in the Topics, which excludes the posterity of freedmen from the character of gen tiles: probably the decision was against the Claudii, and this might be the ground on which Cicero de nied the title of gentiles to the descendants of freed men. I conceive in so doing he must have been mistaken. We know from Cicero himself (de Leg. 11, 22) that no bodies or ashes were allowed to be placed in the common sepulchre unless they be longed to such as shared in the gene and its sacred rites ; and several freedmen have been admitted in to the sepulchre of the Scipios." But in another place he says, "The division into houses was so es sential to the patrician order that the appropriate ancient term to designate that order was a circum locution,—the patrician gentes; but the instance just mentioned shows beyond the reach of a doubt that such a gene, did not consist of patricians alone. The Claudian contained the Marcellii, who were ple beians, equal to the Appii In the splendor of the honors they attained to, and incomparably more useful to the commonwealth ; such plebeian families must evidently have arisen from marriages of dis paragement, contracted before there was any right of intermarriage between the orders. But the Claud ian house had also, a very large number of insig-. nificant persons who bore its name,—such as the M. Claudius who disputed the freedom of Virginia ; nay, according to an opinion of earlier times, as the very case in Cicero proves, it contained the freedmen and their descendants. Thus, among the Gaels, the clan of the Campbells was formed by the nobles and their vassals: if we apply the Roman phrase to them, the former had the clan, the latter only belonged to it." It is obvious that, if what is said in the concluding part of the passage last quot ed be correct, the definition of Sctevola and Cicero is perfectly consistent with the theory of Niebuhr himself ; for the definition, of course, refers to the original stock of the gene, and not to such as might be attached to it or stand in a certain legal relation towards it. In Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, edited by that accomplished classical scholar, Professor Anthon, the same dis tinction is intimated, though not fully developed, as follows: "But it must be observed, though the descendants of freedmen might have no claim as gentiles, the members of the gens might, as such, have claims against them ; and in this sense the descendants of freedmen might be gentiles." This article by George Long is much quoted and contains references to the principal German authorities, and it may be consulted with profit. Hugo, In his history of the Roman Law, vol. 1, p. 83, says, "Those who bore the same name belonged all to the same gene: they were gentiles with regard to each other. Consequently, as the freedmen took the name of their former master, they adhered to his gene, or, in other words, stood In the relation of gentiles to him and his male descendants. Livy refers in ex press terms to the gene of an enfranchised slave (b. 39, 19), "Teeenice Hiepalce . . . gentis enup sio ;" and the right of inheritance of the son of a freedman was conferred on the ground of civil re lationship,—gente. But there must necessarily have been a great difference between those who were born in the gene and those who had only entered it by adoption, and their descendants ; that Is to say, between those who formed the original stock of the gens, who were all of patrician origin, and those who had entered the family by their own enfran chisement or that of their ancestors. The former alone were entitled to the rights of the gentiles; and perhaps the appellation itself was confined to them, while the latter were called gentilitii, to des ignate those against whom the gentiles had certain rights to exercise."
In a lecture of Niebuhr on the Roman Gentes, vol. 1, p. 70, he says, "Such an association, consisting of a number of families, from which a person may withdraw, but Into which he cannot be admitted at all, or only by being adopted by the whole associa tion, Is a gens. It must not be confounded with the family, the members of which are descended from a common ancestor ; for the patronymic names of the gentes are nothing but symbols, and are derived from heroes." Arnold gives the following exposition of the subject: "The people of Rome were divided into the three tribes of the Ramnenses, Titienses, and Luceres, and each of these tribes was divided into ten curial ; It would be more cor rect to say that the union of ten curia! formed the tribe. For the state grew out of the junction of certain original elements ; and these were neither the tribes, nor even the curial, but the gentes or houses which made up the curia. The first element of the whole system was the gene, or house, a union of several families who were bound together by the joint performance of certain religious rites. Actu ally, where a system of houses has existed within historical memory, the several families who com posed a house were not necessarily related to one another ; they were not really cousins more or less distant, all descended from a common ancestor. But there is no reason to doubt that in the original idea of a house the bond of union between its sev eral families was truly sameness of blpod ; such was likely to be the earliest acknowledged tie, al though afterwards, as names are apt to outlive their meaning, an artificial bond may have succeed ed to the natural one, and a house, instead of con sisting of families of real relations, was made up sometimes of families of strangers, whom it was proposed to bind together by a fictitious tie, in the hope that law and custom and religion might to gether rival the force of nature." 1 Arnold, Hist. 31. Maine, In his chapter on the origin of property, selects the village community of India as a type of "an organized patriarchal society and' an assem blage of co-proprietors" which "ought at once to rivet our attention from Its exactly fitting in with the ideas which our studies In the law of persons would lead us to entertain respecting the original condition of property ;" Anc. L. 252. After describ ing it somewhat fully he says: The type with which it should be compared is evidently not the Roman family, but the Roman gene or house. The gene was also 'a group on the model of a family ; it was the family extended by a variety of fictions of which the exact nature was lost in antiquity. In histori cal times, its leading characteristics were the very two which Elphinstone remarks In the village com munity. There was always the assumption of a common origin, an assumption sometimes notorious ly at variance with fact ; and, to repeat the histori an's words, "If a family became extinct, its share returned to the common stock." In old Roman Law, unclaimed Inheritances escheated to the gentiles. It is further suspected by all who have examined their history that the communities, like the gentes, have been very generally adulterated by the admis sion of strangers, but the exact mode of absorption cannot now be ascertained ; id. 256. Another writer considers that the gens "was something very nearly identical with a Celtic clan, the ideutity or similar ity of name being always supposed, to have arisen from relationship, and not from similarity of occu pation, as In the case of the Smiths, Taylors, Lori mers, etc., of modern Europe. There was this pe culiarity, however, about the gens which did not belong to the clan—viz., that it was possible for an individual born In It to cease to belong to It by capitis diminutio, or by adoption (by a family not of the same gene), or adrogation as it was called when the person adopted was sui juris." Int. Cyc. A recognized authority on the civil law refers to the obscurity of this subject in treating of succes sions. Under the twelve tables there were recog sized only (1) swi heredes; (2) agnati; (3) gentiles, and in default of the latter the inheritance lapsed to the State. The praetors called the cognati for the first time to the succession, "probably because" says Sandars (Inst. 290), "at the time of the praetor's legislation there were few families that could boast a descent so pure and accurately known as to satis fy the requisite of gentilitas." He also says in the same connection: "The subject of gentilitas is too obscure, and repays investigation too little, to per mit us to enter into it here. Probably the original notion of gentiles was that of members of some pure uncorrupted patrician stock, though not necessarily of the same descent, but bearing the same name, and having the same sacra. Probably, also, freed men and clients of gentiles were in some degree, considered as themselves gentiles; probably if their property was not claimed by their ,patron it went to the members of his gens, but they had not any claim on the property of any other gentiles. We know also that there were plebeian gentes, formed proba bly by the marriage of a patrician with a plebeian before the plebs received the connubium. Members of plebeian gentes would, we may suppose, have the rights of gentilitas towards other members of the same plebeian gens, and it would seem that they had them towards the members of the patrician gene, from which they were an offset ; Cie. de Orat. 1. 39. Of the mode in which the gentiles took the inheritance, we know nothing of, nor at how late a period of history the gentes were still really in ex istence. Gahm (iii. 17), treats the subject as one of mere antiquarian interest." In his .introduction to the Institutes, Sanders gives generally his under standing of the nature of the gens. The body of Roman citizens was composed of two distinct divi sions, the populus and the plebs. The former con sisted of three tribes, each of ten curia, and each curio was divided into ten decuriw. For the latter another name was gens, "and it included a great number of distinct families, united by having com mon sacred rites, and hearing a common name. In theory at least, the members of the same gens were descended from a common ancestor, and the families of the gens were subdivisions of the same ancestral stock, but both individuals and groups were occa sionally admitted from outside. A pure unspotted pedigree was claimed by every member of a gem, and there was a theoretical equality among all the members of the whole tribe. The heads of the dif ferent families in these gentes met together in a great council, called the council of the curies (comities curiata). A small body of three hundred, answering in number to the gentea in each of the three tribes, and called the senate, was charged with the office of initiating the more important questions submitted to the great council; and a king, nomi nated by the senate, but chosen by the curies, pre sided over the whole body, and was charged with the functions of executive government." The gentiles inherited from each other in the ab sence of agnates.