_The Reign of Custom_.--For a long period custom reigned supreme, and arbitrary social life became conventionalized, and the change from precedent became more and more difficult. The family was despotic, exacting, unyielding in its nature, and individual activity was absorbed in it. So powerful was this early sway of customary law that many tribes never freed themselves from its bondage. Others by degrees slowly evolved from its crystallizing influences. Changes in custom came about largely through the migration of tribes, which brought new scenes and new conditions, the intercourse of one tribe with another in trade and war, and the gradual shifting of the internal life of the social unit. Those tribes that were isolated were left behind in the progress of the race, and to many of them still clung the customs practised thousands of years before. Those that went forward from this first status grew by practice rather than by change of ideals. It is the law of all progress that ideals are conservative, and that they can be broken away from only by the procedure of actual practice. Gradually the reign of customary law gave way to the laws framed by the people. The family government gave way to the political; the individual eventually became the political unit, and freedom of action prevailed in the entire social body. _The Greek and Roman Family Was Strongly Organized_.--In Greece and Rome the family enlarged and formed the gens, {113} the gentes united into a tribe, and the tribe passed into the nation. In all of this formulated government the individual was represented by his family and received no recognition except as a member of such. The tribal chief became the king, or, as he is sometimes called, the patriarchal president, because he presided over a band of equals in power, namely, the assembled elders of the tribe. The heads of noble families were called together to consider the affairs of government, and at a common meal the affairs of the nation were discussed over viands and wine. The king thus gathered the elders about him for the purpose of considering measures to be laid before the people. The popular assembly, composed of all the citizens, was called to sanction what the king and the elders had decreed. Slowly the binding forms of traditional usage were broken down, and the king and his people were permitted to enact those laws which best served the immediate ends of government. True, the old formal life of the family continued to exist. There were the gentes, tribes, and phratries, or brotherhoods, that still existed, and the individual entered the state in civil capacity through his family. But by degrees the old family regime gave way to the new political life, and sovereign power was vested in monarchy, democracy, or aristocracy, according to the nature of the sovereignty.