Mr. Grote does not attempt to define the functions of the phratry, except generally. They were doubtless of a religious character chiefly; but they probably manifested themselves, as among the Iroquois, at the burial of the dead, at public games, at religious festivals, at councils, and at the agoras of the people, where the grouping of chiefs and people would be by phratries rather than by gentes. It would also naturally show itself in the array of the military forces, of which a memorable example is given by Homer in the address of Nestor to Agamemnon.[252] "Separate the troops by tribes and by phratries, Agamemnon, so that phratry may support phratry, and tribes, tribes (krin' andras kata phula, kata phretras, Agamemnon, os phretre phretrephin arege, phula de phulois). If thou wilt thus act, and the Greeks obey, thou wilt then ascertain which of the commanders and which of the soldiers is a coward, and which of them may be brave, for they will fight their best." The number from the same gens in a military force would be too small to be made a basis in the organization of an army; but the larger aggregations of the phratries and tribes would be sufficient. Two things may be inferred from the advice of Nestor: first, that the organization of armies by phratries and tribes had then ceased to be common; and secondly, that in ancient times it had been the usual plan of army organization, a knowledge of which had not then disappeared. We have seen that the Tlascalans and Aztecs, who were in the Middle Status of barbarism, organized and sent out their military bands by phratries which, in their condition, was probably the only method in which a military force could be organized. The ancient German tribes organized their armies for battle on a similar principle.[253] It is interesting to notice how closely shut in the tribes of mankind have been to the theory of their social system.
The obligation of blood revenge, which was turned at a later day into a duty of prosecuting the murderer before the legal tribunals, rested primarily upon the gens of the slain person; but it was also shared in by the phratry, and became a phratric obligation.[254] In the Eumenides of Aeschylus, the Erinnys, after speaking of the slaying of his mother by Orestes, put the question: "What lustral water of his phrators shall await him?"[255] which seems to imply that if the criminal escaped punishment final purification was performed by his phratry instead of his gens. Moreover, the extension of the obligation from the gens to the phratry implies a common lineage of all the gentes in a phratry.