(4) _Evidence from the Gens or γένος._--There is no more puzzling topic in the history of the ancient world than the origin and nature of the community called by the Romans the _gens_, and by the Greeks the γένος. To the present writer it seems that no existing community of men, neither totem kin, nor clan, nor house community, nor _gotra_, precisely answers to the _gens_ or the γένος. Our information about these forms of society is slight and confused. The most essential thing to notice for the moment is the fact that both in Greece and Rome the γένος and _gens_ were extremely ancient, so ancient that the γένος was decaying in Greece when history begins, while in Rome we can distinctly see the rapid decadence and dissolution of the _gens_. In the laws of the Twelve Tables, the _gens_ is a powerful and respected corporation. In the time of Cicero the nature of the _gens_ is a matter but dimly understood. Tacitus begins to be confused about the gentile nomenclature. In the Empire gentile law fades away. In Greece, especially at Athens, the early political reforms transferred power from the γένος to a purely local organisation, the Deme. The Greek of historical times did not announce his γένος in his name (as the Romans always did), but gave his own name, that of his father, and that of his deme. Thus we may infer that in Greek and Roman society the γένος and _gens_ were dying, not growing, organisations. In very early times it is probable that foreign _gentes_ were adopted _en bloc_ into the Roman Commonwealth. Very probably, too, a great family, on entering the Roman bond, may have assumed, by a fiction, the character and name of a _gens_. But that Roman society in historical times, or that Greek society, could evolve a new _gens_ or γένος in a normal natural way, seems excessively improbable.