[84] See the instructive inscription in Professor Ross’s work (Über die Demen von Attika, p. 26) of the γένος Ἀμυνανδριδῶν, commemorating the archon of that gens, the priest of Kekrops, the Ταμίας, or treasurer, and the names of the members, with the deme and tribe of each individual. Compare Bossler, De Gent. Atticis, p. 53. About the peculiar religious rites of the gens called Gephyræi, see Herodot. v, 61. Such was the primitive religious and social union of the population of Attica in its gradually ascending scale,—as distinguished from the political union, probably of later introduction, represented at first by the trittyes and naukraries, and in after times by the ten Kleisthenean tribes, subdivided into trittyes and demes. The religious and family bond of aggregation is the earlier of the two: but the political bond, though beginning later, will be found to acquire constantly increasing influence throughout the greater part of this history. In the former, personal relation is the essential and predominant characteristic,[85]—local relation being subordinate: in the latter, property and residence become the chief considerations, and the personal element counts only as measured by these accompaniments. All these phratric and gentile associations, the larger as well as the smaller, were founded upon the same principles and tendencies of the Grecian mind,[86]—a coalescence of the idea of worship with that of ancestry, or of communion in certain special religious rites with communion of blood, real or supposed. The god, or hero, to whom the assembled members offered their sacrifices, was conceived as the primitive ancestor, to whom they owed their origin; often through a long list of intermediate names, as in the case of the Milesian Hekatæus, so often before adverted to.[87] Each family had its own sacred rites and funereal commemoration of ancestors, celebrated by the master of the house, to which none but members of the family were admissible: the extinction of a family, carrying with it the suspension of these religious rites, was held by the Greeks to be a misfortune, not merely from the loss of the citizens composing it, but also because the family gods and the manes of deceased citizens were thus deprived of their honors,[88] and might visit the country with displeasure. The larger associations, called gens, phratry, tribe, were formed by an extension of the same principle,—of the family considered as a religious brotherhood, worshipping some common god or hero with an appropriate surname, and recognizing him as their joint ancestor; and the festivals Theoenia and Apaturia[89]—the first Attic, the second common to all the Ionic race,—annually brought together the members of these phratries and gentes for worship, festivity, and maintenance of special sympathies; thus strengthening the larger ties without effacing the smaller. [85] Φυλαὶ γενικαὶ, opposed to φυλαὶ τοπικαί.—Dionys. Hal. Ant. Rom. iv, 14.