GENS

Gens

In ancient Rome, a gens, plural gentes, referred to a family, consisting of all those individuals who shared the same nomen and claimed descent from a common ancestor. A branch of a gens was called a stirps . The gens was an important social structure at Rome and throughout Italy during the period of the Roman Republic. Much of an individual's social standing depended on the gens to which he belonged. Certain gentes were considered patrician, others plebeian, while some had both patrician and plebeian branches. The importance of membership in a gens declined considerably in imperial times.

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gens

Noun

  1. A legally defined unit of Roman society, being a collection of people related by birth, marriage or adoption, but allowing a greater amount of time between members and their common ancestor than is commonly implied by the term .
  2. A tribal subgroup whose members are characterized by having the same descent, usually along the male line.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: gens
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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