[Sidenote: In Ashantee, where the kingdom descends through women, the rank of the king’s father is not regarded.] The hypothesis which we have been led to frame of the rule of succession to the Latin kingship will be confirmed by analogy if we can shew that elsewhere, under a system of female kinship, the paternity of the kings is a matter of indifference—nay, that men who are born slaves may, like Servius Tullius, marry royal princesses and be raised to the throne. Now this is true of the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast in West Africa. Thus in Ashantee, where the kingdom descends in the female line to the king’s brothers and afterwards to the sons of his sister in preference to his own sons, the sisters of the reigning monarch are free to marry or intrigue with whom they please, provided only that their husband or lover be a very strong and handsome man, in order that the kings whom he begets may be men of finer presence than their subjects. It matters not how low may be the rank and position of the king’s father. If the king’s sisters, however, have no sons, the throne will pass to the king’s own son, and failing a son, to the chief vassal or the chief slave. But in the Fantee country the principal slave succeeds to the exclusion of the son. So little regard is paid by these people to the lineage, especially the paternal lineage, of their kings.[888] Yet Ashantee has attained a barbaric civilisation as high perhaps as that of any negro state, and probably not at all inferior to that of the petty Latin kingdoms at the dawn of history.