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The Attic Genos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

S. D. Lambert
S. D. Lambert
Affiliation:
British School at Athens, bsambrs@eexi.gr
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Extract

Over twenty years since the influential revisionist studies of Roussel and Bourriot, agreement on a satisfactory theory of the Attic genos seems as elusive as ever. Although they differed on details, these two scholars were agreed in their rejection of the old monolithic account of the genos as aristocratic family whose institutionalized control over state cults and phratry admissions in the historical period was a relic of a wider political dominance. Roussel and Bourriot instead proposed a tripartite model according to which the formal genos-kome—a more or less localized community similar to the later deme, with hereditary but socio-economically diverse membership, and enjoying, as a tighter community well placed to regulate its own admissions, automatic access to the wider phratry—was distinguishable both from aristocratic families, such as the Peisistratidai or Alkmeonidai, and priestly houses, such as the Kerykes and Eumolpidai of Eleusis. Subsequent discussion has moved in several directions. My analysis of the relationship between phratry and genos followed a broadly revisionist line. I found no good evidence for gene controlling the access to phratries of persons who were not genos members and presented a new interpretation of the crucial Demotionidai decrees in which, contrary to prevailing theories, neither of the two groups mentioned in them—the Demotionidai and the House (oikos) of the Dekeleieis—was a privileged subgroup dominating the whole. Rather, I suggested that the Demotionidai were a phratry in process of fission, the Dekelean House a product of this process. Others, however, have taken the debate in the other direction, as it were reprivileging the genos.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , December 1999 , pp. 484 - 489
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1999

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References

1 I am grateful to Parker, Robert and Rhodes, Peter for reading a draft of this paper. I abbreviate two of my works as follows: Phratries: The Phratries of Attica (Ann Arbor, 1993; 2nd edn 1998); Salaminioi: ZPE 119 (1997), 85–106.Google Scholar

2 Roussel, D., Tribu et Cité (Paris, 1976).Google Scholar

3 Bourriot, F., Recherches sur la nature du genos (Lille, 1976).Google Scholar

4 FGH 328 Philochoros F 35.

5 Phratries, especially chs. 2 and 3.

6 Phratries, T 3 (cf. IG ii2 1237).

7 Rhodes, P. J., CQ n.s. 47 (1997), 109–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Humphreys, S., Sociologia del diritto 8 (1983), 35–44Google Scholar, and in as yet unpublished work. See Parker, R., Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford, 1996), ch. 5, nn. 1, 15, and 27; qualified support for Humphreys's view at 62–66.Google Scholar Humphreys acknowledges a debt to Fustel de Coulanges in her emphasis on property/privilege as sustaining the genos; but her view also has much in common with other pre-revisionist theories, e.g. that of Andrewes, A., Hermes 89 (1961), 129–40Google Scholar, that the genos was a leading family, the phratry a means by which its power was formalized among its retainers in the Dark Ages.

9 Most clearly the priestess of Athena Skiras, in whose festival, the Oschophoria, the Salaminioi played a role which parallels that of other demonstrably priestly gene. Salaminioi, T 1 (state funding at T 1, 20–21 and 87); Parker (n. 8), 57–8. On the other Salaminioi priesthoods, see Parker (n. 8), 308–16; Lambert, S. D., ZPE 125 (1999), 114–15Google Scholar, and works cited there.

10 Andocides 1.125–27 with Phratries, 70; see further below.

11 References at n. 16; Phratries, 60.

12 Hdt. 5.57–61; Parker (n. 8), 288–9. They were a formal genos in the Roman period and there seems no good reason to doubt that they had this status earlier.

13 ἄνδρα ἐργáτην ĸαì ἀĸριβῶς τòν βíον συνειλεγμένον, Dem. 59.50. Throughout, the impression of Phrastor is rather that of the country bumpkin; there is no hint of the decayed aristocrat. Whether Phrastor actually corresponded to this image is less important than that Demosthenes’ audience must have found it credible that a formal genos might contain such a man. Note also Thuc. 6.54.2 (Aristogeiton, member of the genos Gephyraioi, described as μέσοςπολίτης). Euxitheos, speaker of Dem. 57, whose background was dubious enough for his citizenship to be challenged, also claimed to be a genos member (cf. Phratries, 62). On the general point, see Wade-Gery, H. T., CQ 25 (1931)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 4 = Essays in Greek History (Oxford, 1958), 90.

14 On the definition of ‘state-cult’, see Aleshire, S. B. in R., Hägg (ed.), Ancient Greek Cult Practice from the Epigraphical Evidence (Stockholm, 1994), 9–16.Google Scholar

15 Phratries, 61, n. 12.

16 Ath. Pol. F 3, cf. Aristot. Pol. 1.1252b, 16–18; also suggested by the term ithageneis applied to Attic gene by Hesychius, see Parker (n. 8), 284–5. While newly enfranchised citizens were normally given phratry membership, they were never admitted to a genos; and citizen non-gennetai in the fourth century would perhaps have been explained as non-autochthonous. The eugeneia to which Euxitheos lays claim at Dem. 57.46 is probably meant to be suggestive not of aristocracy so much as this ‘straight descent’ from Ur-Athenians which his alleged genos membership and tenure of a priesthood implied.

17 For example, Kallias at Xen. Symp. 8.40 is an aristocrat (eupatrides) qua priest, not simply qua member of the Kerykes. Several Salaminioi families in the fourth century were also distinguished (see Lambert [n. 9], Part III), but we know mainly about those who represented the genos in the arbitration of 363/2, probably not a representative cross-section.

18 Implicit, for example, at Aeschin. 2.147; Dem. 21.182; Hesych. s.v. Ἐτεοβουτáδαι.

19 Parker (n. 8), 24, 61.

20 Parker (n. 8), 62.

21 Salaminioi, Part 2; Lambert (n. 9), 128–30.

22 (Em)baros, by a ruse, was said to have obtained for his ‘genos’ (i.e. apparently a genos headed by him) the priesthood of Artemis Mounichia; other genos eponyms were also thought to be cult-founders, e.g. Boutes and Phytalos. For details, see Parker (n. 8), Appendix 2. Such cases at least show us what was conceivable; note that while Boutes was brother of an Athenian king, Erechtheus, genos eponyms of this type do not generally have an aristocratic aura.

23 On this analysis the Eleusinian gene might have been some (even all?) of the sub-communities of old Eleusis, each with a role in the major cult of their polis.

24 Such lack of specificity is not unparalleled. Phratries are never referred to by name in contemporary literary evidence; note also Phratries, T 16 (decree of unnamed phrateres) and T 18 (list of a phratry or phratry subgroup beginning οἲδε øρáτερες, cf. Phratries, 79–91).

25 Phratries, 137–9.

26 For example, Andoc. 1.115, Lysias 6.10. Rhodes (n. 7), 119.

27 Rhodes does not question the case I raised (Phratries, ch. 2) against earlier attempts to argue that certain passages of the orators showed gene exercising power over the admission of non-gennetai to their phratry.

28 See Phratries, 68–71.

29 Aeschin. 2.147.

30 Cf. Parker (n. 8), 118–19 and 285–6.