in Indo-European Language and Society, Benveniste analyzes civis and domus (Latin--traditionally thought to mean "the citizen" and "the house")
Benveniste finds that "the earliest written uses of these terms did not pertain to concepts of bordered and material spatial limitation" (Robertson notes, 81, that they should be thought of as "systematic intensities" rather than "structural limits")
Benveniste: "The authentic sense of civis is not 'citizen,' as it is traditionally translated, but 'fellow-citizen'"
it should have "a sense of reciprocity"; "civitas [is] a collective notion"
similarly, domus should mean the "house in its social and moral aspects, and not as a construction"
"Both domus and civis correspond to the specific milieu of a social reciprocity [...] No sense of private or public, in the way we now understand these terms in relation to ownership or to interiority and exteriority, appends itself to either."
Robertson 80: "He aligns that Latin domus with the Greek oikos, which also indicated a community of companionship and quotidian participation: the sharing of food, worship; the 'works of peace' in Aristotle's words, not a built architecture, defined the household"
"These everyday operations were at the center of a scaled series of collective concepts, which progressed outwards from the household to the polis"