Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/348

 342 THE BEV0LUTI0N3. BOOK IV. lion in tho domestic worship. We have just seen one of these classes emerge from its inferior conditio.! ; tho second also aspired at an early date to become free. It succeeded in the course of time; clientship became modified, and finally disappeared. This was an immense change, which the ancient writers have given us no account of. In the same way, in the niiddle ages, the chroniclers do not tell us how the rural j)opulation were transformed by degrees. There lias been in the existence of human societies a great number of revolutions no trace of which has been handed down to us in any document. Writers have not noticed them, because they were accomplished slowly, in an insensible manner, without any apparent struggle ; profound and silent revolutions, which moved the foundations of human society, without anything ap- pearing on the surface, and which remained concealed even from the generations that took part in them. History can seize them only a long time after they have taken place, when, in comparing two epochs in the life of a people, it sees differences between them, which show that a great revolution has been acomplished. If we credit the picture which writers have traced of the primitive clientship of Rome, that must have been truly a golden age. Who could be more humane than this patron, who defended his client before the courts, who sustained him with his money if he was poor, and ■who provided for the education of his children ? What could be more touching than to see this client sustain the patron when he had fallen into debt, paying his debts, giving all he had to procure his ransom ? But there was not so much sentiment among the ancients. Disinterested affection and devotion were never institu- tions. We must have another idea of client and patron.