Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/84

64 unmarried daughters. As, according to the older Roman view, a woman was not capable of having power either over others or over herself, the power over her, or, as it was in this case more mildly expressed, the "guardianship" (tutela), remained with the house to which she belonged, and was now exercised, in the room of the deceased house-master, by the whole of the nearest male members of the family; ordinarily, therefore, by sons over their mother, and by brothers over their sisters. In this sense the family, once founded, endured unchanged till the male stock of its founder died out; only the bond of connection must of course have become practically more lax from generation to generation, until at length it became impossible to prove the original unity. On this, and on this alone, rested the distinction between family and clan, or, according to the Roman expression, between Agnati and Gentiles. Both denoted the male stock; but the family embraced only those individuals who, mounting up from generation to generation, were able to exhibit the successive steps of their descent from a common progenitor; the clan (gens), on the other hand, comprehended all those who claimed to be descended from a common ancestor, but were no longer able fully to point out the intermediate links, and thereby to establish the degree of their relationship. This is very clearly expressed in the Roman names: when they speak of "Marcus, son of Marcus, grandson of Marcus and so on, the Martian," the family reaches as far as the ascendants are designated individually, and where the family terminates the clan is introduced supplementarily, indicating derivation from the common ancestor, who has bequeathed to all his descendants the name of the "children of Marcus."

To these strictly closed unities of the family or household united under the control of a living master, and the clan which originated from the dissolution of such households, there further belonged the dependents or "listeners" (clientes, from cluere). This term denoted not the guests, that is, the members of similar circles who were temporarily sojourning in another household than their own, and still less the slaves, who were looked upon in law as the property of the household and not as members of it, but those individuals who, while they were not free burgesses of any commonwealth, yet lived within one in a condition of protected freedom. This class included refugees, who had