A slight progress toward social order and the tendency to distribute the powers of government are to be observed. Certain property was held in common and certain laws regulated the family life. The family groups continued to enlarge by natural increase and by adoption, all those coming into the gens submitting to its laws, customs, and social usage. Finally several gentes united into a brotherhood association called by the Greeks a _phratry_, by the Romans a _curia_. This brotherhood was organized on a common religious basis, with a common deity and a central place of worship. It also was used partially as the basis of military organization. This group represents the first unit based upon locality. From it spring the ward idea and the idea of local self-government. The _tribe_ represented a number of gentes united for religious and military purposes. Although its principal power was military, there were a common altar and a common worship for all members of the tribe. The chief, or head of the tribe, was the military leader, and usually performed an important part in all the affairs of the tribe. As the tribe became the seat of power for military operations, the gens remained as the foundation of political government, for it was the various heads of the gentes who formed the council of the chief or king and later laid the foundation of the senate, wherever instituted. It was common for the tribe in most instances to pass into a village community before developing full national life. There were exceptions to this, where tribes have passed directly into {44} well-organized groups without the formation of the village or the city. The _village community_, next in logical order, represents a group of closely related people located on a given territory, with a half-communal system of government. There were the little group of houses forming the village proper and representing the different homes of the family group. There were the common pasture-land, the common woodland, and the fertile fields for cultivation. These were all owned, except perhaps the house lot, by the entire community, and every year the tillable land was parcelled out by the elders of the community to the heads of families for tillage. Usually the tiller of the soil had a right to the crop, although among the early Greeks the custom seems to be reversed, and the individual owned the land, but was compelled to place its proceeds into a common granary. The village community represents the transition from a nomadic to a permanent form of government, and was common to all of the Aryan tribes. The federation of the village communities or the expansion of the tribes formed the Greek city-state, common to all of the Greek communities. It represents the real beginning of civic life among the nations.