Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/213

VII attached to them as those who hearkened and obeyed (clientes), and the clear logic of the Roman mind had already put this relation of dependence into a definite form, with distinct rights and duties on each side. The clients were thus a part of the State, but in a diminished sense (minuto jure): they could hold no office under the king; they could not take the auspices; they could not marry into the families of their patroni, and probably could not share the advantage of the public land. They were in statu pupillari, and could only, as it were, be represented by a tutor. But they were protected as a matter of duty by their patroni. They had at least a piece of garden ground given them sufficient to live upon; they were admitted into the curiæ — the earliest political division of the State, — and it seems likely that they could in these divisions answer Yes or No to such questions as the king chose to lay before the whole people.

What was the origin of these clients is a question which does not concern us here. What does concern us is to note how they came to form the material of the later Roman State. If a patrician family died out, the relationship between it and its clients ceased to exist. There may have been other ways in which the bond of dependence was relaxed, but this is the only one which we can discern at all clearly. These emancipated clients could not be turned adrift, for they were already part of the State; they remained so after their emancipation, and were called by one of the many Latin words which bid fair to be immortal. They became the