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Some gentes prosper and increase in numbers, while others, through calamities, decline, and others become extinct; so that transfers of gentes from one phratry to another were found necessary to preserve some degree of equality in the number of phrators in each. The phratric organization has existed among the Iroquois from time immemorial.
At the funerals of persons of recognized importance in the tribe the phratric organization manifested itself in a conspicuous manner The phrators of the decedent in a body were the mourners, and the members of the opposite phratry conducted the ceremonies.
Among the Greeks the curiae are called phratriae and phatriae in other words associations, brotherhoods unions, guilds from the fact that men of the same phratry phrased or revealed to one another their own intentions without scruple or fear. Hence fathers or kinsmen or teachers are phrators, those who share in the same phratry.
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