Claudii (the Marcelli), for the inheritance of a _Libertinus_ in Cicero _de Oratore_. On that occasion a _res judicata_ was pronounced by the centuries, that the patrician Claudii could not inherit in a case of this kind; from which the conclusion was afterwards drawn that the _Libertini_ did not belong to the _gens_. In the whole of this definition, there is not a word about a descent from a common stock, closely connected as the idea would seem with it. Hence it clearly follows that the _gentes_ in Rome were of the same nature as the Greek γένη. _Genus_ and _gens_ are moreover quite the same word, a thing which often happens with words of the old language, e. g. _cliens_ and _clientus_,[67] _Campans_[68] and _Campanus_, and likewise _Romans_ and _Romanus_: the genitives _Romanum_ and _Romanom_ come from that old contracted nominative. The very institution of the _gens_ essentially implies a division of the state by its fundamental laws into a certain number of such associations, which then constituted small states by themselves, and enjoyed special privileges of which the extent was very great: _jus gentium_, and _jura gentium_, originally had perhaps a somewhat different, a much wider meaning than we generally believe. The numbers of the _gentes_ are always found in such a proportion to the state as never could have been the result of chance. In Attica there were 360 γένη, a number which the grammarians very correctly refer to the division of the year, or of the compass. This is also the case in Germany; in Cologne there were three orders, each of fifteen houses (Geschlechter); in Florence there were three times four and twenty houses; in Dittmarsch three times ten. Now in Rome there were probably three times one hundred _gentes_, i. e. three tribes of a hundred clans each; wherefore Livy gives them the name of _centuria_, and not _tribus_. There usually existed between the division into tribes and that into clans an intermediate one comprising the latter, as the φράτραι: in Greece, the curies at Rome, which corresponded to the orders in Cologne, and to the classes in the Lombard towns. These Curies are parts of a _Tribus_, and a combination of several _gentes_ (probably consisting always of ten) for common sacrifice. And just as every _gens_ had its own _gentilician sanctuaries_,--for _sacra familiarum_, which sometimes we find mentioned in modern writers, were unknown to the Romans,--so likewise as member of a Cury, each individual had some special duties besides of worship, and a vote in the popular assemblies. The ancients did not vote by poll, but by corporations: from the earliest times therefore it continued to be the established usage at Athens that recruiting and voting should be carried on by φυλαί (_Tribus_). Four Phylæ might be outvoted by six; although, if polled, the latter were very inferior in numbers. In Rome they went still farther: they did not vote by Tribes but by Curies.