with a foreign protector, and those slaves in respect
of whom their master had for the time being waived
the exercise of his rights, and so conferred on them
practical freedom. This relation had not the
distinctive character of a strict relation -de jure-,
like that of a man to his guest: the client remained
a man non-free, in whose case good faith and use and
wont alleviated the condition of non-freedom.
Hence the “listeners” of the household
(-clientes-) together with the slaves strictly so
called formed the “body of servants” (-familia-)
dependent on the will of the “burgess”
(-patronus-, like -patricius-). Hence according
to original right the burgess was entitled partially
or wholly to resume the property of the client, to
reduce him on emergency once more to the state of
slavery, to inflict even capital punishment on him;
and it was simply in virtue of a distinction -de facto-,
that these patrimonial rights were not asserted with
the same rigour against the client as against the
actual slave, and that on the other hand the moral
obligation of the master to provide for his own people
and to protect them acquired a greater importance
in the case of the client, who was practically in
a more free position, than in the case of the slave.
Especially must the -de facto- freedom of the client
have approximated to freedom -de jure- in those cases
where the relation had subsisted for several generations:
when the releaser and the released had themselves
died, the -dominium- over the descendants of the released
person could not be without flagrant impiety claimed
by the heirs at law of the releaser; and thus there
was gradually formed within the household itself a
class of persons in dependent freedom, who were different
alike from the slaves and from the members of the
-gens- entitled in the eye of the law to full and
equal rights.
The Roman Community
On this Roman household was based the Roman state,
as respected both its constituent elements and its
form. The community of the Roman people arose
out of the junction (in whatever way brought about)
of such ancient clanships as the Romilii, Voltinii,
Fabii, etc.; the Roman domain comprehended the
united lands of those clans.(3) Whoever belonged to
one of these clans was a burgess of Rome. Every
marriage concluded in the usual forms within this
circle was valid as a true Roman marriage, and conferred
burgess-rights on the children begotten of it.
Whoever was begotten in an illegal marriage, or out
of marriage, was excluded from the membership of the
community. On this account the Roman burgesses
assumed the name of the “father’s children”
(-patricii-), inasmuch as they alone in the eye of
the law had a father. The clans with all the
families that they contained were incorporated with
the state just as they stood. The spheres of
the household and the clan continued to subsist within
the state; but the position which a man held in these