Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/365

 •CHAP, TI. THE CLIENTS BECOME FREE. 859 now shall you be against a single enemy.' Thence- foith we no longer see in the history of Rome these ancient clients, these men hereditarily attached to the gens. Primitive clientship gave plate to a clientship of a new kind, a voluntary, almost fictitious bond, which no longer imposed the same obligations. We no longer see in Rome the three classes, patricians, clients, and plebeians. Only two remain; the clients are con- founded with the plebs. The Marcelli appear to be a branch thus detached from the Claudian gens. They were Claudii; but as they were not patriicians, they belonged to the gens -only as clients. Free at an early period, and enriched, by what means we know not, they were first raised to plebeian dignities, and later to those of the city. For several centuries the Claudian gens seems to have for- gotten its rights over them. One day, however, iu Cicero's time," it recalled them to mind very unex- pectedly. A freedman or client of the Marcelli died, leaving property, which, according to law, would revert to the patron. The patrician Claudii claimed that the Marcelli, being clients, could not themselves have cli- ents, and that their freedmen and their property should belong to the chief of the patrician gens, who alone was capable of exercising the rights of a patron. This suit very much astonished the public, and embarrassed the lawyers: Cicero himself thought the question very ob- scure. But it would not have been so four centuries earlier, and the Claudii would have gained their cause. But in Cicero's time the laws upon which they founded their claim were so old that they had been forgotten, -jind the court easily decided the case in favor of tho JVIarcelli. The ancient clientship no longer existed. ' Livy, VI. 18 * Cicero, De Oratore, I. 89-