ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

, a ''genos'' (

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

: γένος, "race, stock, kin", plural γένη ''genē'') was a social group claiming common descent, referred to by a single name (see also Sanskrit "

Gana The word ( ) in Sanskrit and Pali means "flock, troop, multitude, number, tribe, category, series, or class". It can also be used to refer to a "body of attendants" and can refer to "a company, any assemblage or association of men formed for t ...

"). Most ''gene'' were composed of noble families—Herodotus uses the term to denote noble families—and much of early Greek politics seems to have involved struggles between ''gene''. ''Gene'' are best attested in

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

, where writers from Herodotus to Aristotle dealt with them. Early modern historians postulated that ''gene'' had been the basic organizational group of the Dorian and Ionian tribes that settled Greece during the

Greek Dark Ages The Greek Dark Ages ( 1180–800 BC) were earlier regarded as two continuous periods of Greek history: the Postpalatial Bronze Age (c. 1180–1050 BC) and the Prehistoric Iron Age or Early Iron Age (c. 1050–800 BC). The last included all the ...

, but more recent scholarship has reached the conclusion that ''gene'' arose later as certain families staked a claim to noble lineage. In time, some, but not necessarily all, ''gene'' came to be associated with hereditary priestly functions.Lambert, Stephen, "A Polis and its Priests: Athenian Priesthoods before and after Pericles' Citizenship Law," Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Bd. 59, H. 2 (2010), pp. 143-175

References

*Fine, John V.A. ''The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History''. Harvard University Press, 1983. *Hornblower, Simon, and Anthony Spawforth ed. ''The Oxford Classical Dictionary''. Oxford University Press, 2003. {{ISBN, 0-19-866172-X Society of ancient Greece European clans

See also

References