Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/158

 152 THE FAMILY. BOOK n. We are not to judge of the clientship of earlier ages from the clients that we see in Horace's time. The client, it is clear, was for a long time a servant attached to a patron. But there Avas then something to give him dignity; he had a part in the worship, and was associated in the religion of the family. He had the same sacred fire, the same festivals, the same sacra as his patron. At Rome, in sign of this religious com- munity, he took the name of the family. He was con- sidered as a member of it by adoption. Hence the close bond and reciprocity of duties between the patron and the client. Listen to the old Roman law: "If a patron has done his client WTong, let him be accursed, sacer esto, — let him die." The patron was obliged to protect his client by all the means and with all the power of which he was master; by his jjrayers as a priest, by his lance as a warrior, by his law as a judge. Later, when the client was called before the city tribunal, it was the patron's duty to defend him. It was his duty even to reveal to hira the mysterious formulas of the law that would enable him to gain his cause. One might testify in court against a cognate, but not against a client ; and men continued long to consider their duties towards clients as far above those towards cognates.' Why? Because a cognate, con- nected solely through women, was not a relative, and had no part in the family religion. The client, on the contrary, had a community of worship ; he had, in- ferior though he was, a real relationsliip, which con- sisted, according to the expression of Plato, in adoring the same domestic gods. Clientship was a sacred bond which religion had ibrmed, and which nothing could break. Once the ' Cato, in Aulus Gellius, V. 3; XXI. 1.