Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/307

 CHAP. I. PATRICIANS AND CLIENTS. 301 constituted as if these classes had not existed. We were able therefore to defer the study of these till we had arrived at the period of the revolutions. The ancient city, like all human society, had ranks, distinctions, and inequalities. We know the distinc- tion originally made at Athens between the Eupatrids and the Tiietes ; at Sparta we find the class of Equals and that of the Inferiors ; and in Euboea, that of the Knights and that of the People. The history of Rome is full of the struggles between the Patricians and Ple- beians, struggles that we find in all the Sabine, Latin, and Etruscan cities. We can oven remark that the higher we ascend in the history of Greece and Italy, the more profound and the more strongly marked the distinction appears — a positive proof that the in- equality did not grow up with time, but that it existed from the beginning, and that it was contemporary with the birth of cities. It is worth while to inquire upon what principles this division of classes rested. We can thus the more easily see by virtue of what ideas or what needs the struggles commenced, what the inferior classes claimed, and on what principles the superior classes defended their empire. We have seen above that the city grew out of the confederation of families and tribes. Xow, before the day on which the city was founded, the fiimily already sontained within itself this distinction of classes. In- i^.ecd, the family was never dismembered ; it was indivis- ible, like the primitive religion of the hearth. The oldest son alone, succeeding the father, took possession of the priesthood, the property, and the authority, and his brothers were to him what they had been to their fa- ther. From generation to generation, from first-born