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CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF GEORGIA 89
others were more independent. Besides these, there were
slaves. And in the towns a class of merchants and artisans
gradually grew up.
Strabo tells us (XI, 3, 6) that among the Iberians all property
was jointly owned by the family, which was ruled and governed
by the eldest. Evidently this refers to " great families,"
such as are still to be found in certain remote mountain
districts, especially in Kakhetia and Karthlia, embracing
several closely related families comprising as many as fifty,
or in bygone days even a hundred, members. At the head
of each " great family " were a father and mother, who were
chosen for life, and preferably were the eldest. The " great
family " is a highly ancient patriarchal institution among
Indo-Europeans, especially the Southern Slavs, but found also
among Asiatic peoples.
This remarkable people was constantly at war in defence of
its nationality ; its beautiful country served as a continual
bone of contention between its mighty neighbours in the
south-east and south-west, in the south, and eventually in the
north as well. It could not, indeed, be otherwise with a
country occupying the bridge between the Caspian and
Black Seas. Across this bridge the Caucasus forms a massive
mountain barrier, upon which successive waves of invasion
from the south, south-east, and west broke again and again.
In the north lay in old days the steppes of the Scythian
nomads; in the south-east was the powerful kingdom of
Persia ; in the south, nearest Armenia, the kingdoms of the
Euphrates and Tigris, and later the Arabs and Turks ; in
the south-west and west the peoples of Asia Minor, the
Greek and Roman world-empires, and later on the Turks.
There were only a few ways through, or past, the Caucasian
mountain rampart, by which the nomad hordes of the north
could attack ; one was the narrow, marshy seaboard plain by
the Caspian ; another was the narrow gorge called the
Daryal Pass (i.e. Dar-i-Alan, the " Alan road "), or the
" Iberian gate " of the ancients, which traverses the mighty
ridge of mountains below the lofty volcanic glacier of Mkim
vari or Kasbek ; a third ran somewhat farther west up the
Ardon Valley from the north, through the Khasar Gorge to
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