Romans with merciless rigour and carried out to all its consequences; whereas among the Greeks alleviations of its harshness were early introduced both in practice and in legislation, the marriage of slaves, for example, being recognized as a legal relation.
On the household was based the clan, that is, the community of the descendants of the same progenitor; and out of the clan among the Greeks as well as the Italians arose the state. But while under the weaker political development of Greece the clan-bond maintained itself as a corporate power in contradistinction to that of the state far even into historical times, the state in Italy made its appearance at once complete, in so far as in presence of its authority the clans were quite neutralized and it exhibited an association not of clans, but of citizens. Conversely, again, the individual attained, in presence of the clan, an inward independence and freedom of personal development far earlier and more completely in Greece than in Rome--a fact reflected with great clearness in the Greek and Roman proper names, which, originally similar, came to assume very different forms. In the more ancient Greek names the name of the clan was very frequently added in an adjective form to that of the individual; while, conversely, Roman scholars were aware that their ancestors bore originally only one name, the later -praenomen-. But while in Greece the adjectival clan-name early disappeared, it became, among the Italians generally and not merely among the Romans, the principal name; and the distinctive individual name, the -praenomen-, became subordinate. It seems as if the small and ever diminishing number and the meaningless character of the Italian, and particularly of the Roman, individual names, compared with the luxuriant and poetical fulness of those of the Greeks, were intended to illustrate the truth that it was characteristic of the one nation to reduce all to a level, of the other to promote the free