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