institutions attributed to the Sabines and Etruscans were, as Mommsen and others have shown, common to all peoples of Greek-Italian stock, and could not be strange to the Latins. We must hold that the Romans were essentially a Latin race, though influenced by a considerable admixture with Sabine and, to a lesser degree, Etruscan races (see Rome).
Patricians, Clients and Plebeians.—But whatever their ethnographic descent, it is pretty certain that the Roman civitas Divisions of the people. was in the earliest period an organization that was patriarchal in its essence, but in which there was to be distinguished, on the one hand, a dominant class enjoying all the rights of citizenship, and, on the other, a semi-servile or quasi-vassal class excluded from such rights. The former class were called patricii or Quirites;[1] the latter were called clientes and (later) plebeii.
Patricians.—There was part of the law of Rome that even in the Empire was known by the name of jus Quiritium, and this Patricians. in the regal period was the only law. The patricians at first were the Quirites, and prior at least to the time of Servius Tullius they alone enjoyed rights under this law. From their number the council of elders was selected; they alone could take part in the curiate comitia; they alone could contract a lawful marriage and make a testament; in a word, all the peculiar institutions of early Rome were for their benefit alone.
But these rights and prerogatives they enjoyed as members of gentes or clans, the clans being aggregations of families bearing The gentes. a common name and theoretically at least tracing their descent from a common ancestor. These clans, of which there were normally three hundred altogether according to a rather doubtful tradition, were organized constitutionally in curies. Of the curies, again, there were thirty in all, there being probably ten in each of the three tribes, organized primarily for military and secondarily for political and religious purposes. Though for the federation of the curiae and gentes Rome required a common ruler and common institutions, religious, military and political, yet it was long before such federation into a state displaced entirely the separate institutions of the several gentes. Every clan had its own cult peculiar to its own members. It had its common property and its common burial-place. It probably had some common council or assembly, for we read not only of special gentile customs, but of gentile statutes and decrees. Tradition records instances of wars waged by individual gentes, indicating that they had the right to require military service alike from their members and dependants. Widows and orphans of deceased clansmen were under the guardianship of the gens or of some particular member of it to whom the trust was specially confided. If a clansman left no descendants, his property passed to his fellow-gentiles. Finally, its members were always entitled to rely upon its assistance, to have maintenance when indigent, to be ransomed from captivity, and to be avenged when killed or injured.
Along with the gentiles there were in Rome from the earliest period other persons known by the name of clientes (clients). Clients. Their origin is wholly unknown. Some of them may have been the original inhabitants of Rome and their descendants, but more probably they were mostly immigrants from other communities or citizens of conquered towns whom the Romans were unable or unwilling to treat as slaves. Some may have been slaves to whom liberty de facto had been given. Following a custom familiar both to Latins and Sabines, such persons were placed under the protection of the heads of patrician families. The relationship was hereditary on both sides, and known as that of patron and client. The client[2] became a dependent member of his patron's clan—not gentilis but gentilicius. His patron had to provide him with what was necessary for his sustenance and that of his family; and, as ownership or possession of lands increased in extent, it was probably not unusual for the patron or his gens to give him during pleasure a plot of land to cultivate for himself. The patron had, moreover, to assist him in his transactions with third parties, and obtain redress for him when injured. The client, on the other hand, had to maintain his patron's interests by every means in his power. But the advantage must have been chiefly on the side of the client, who, without becoming a citizen, obtained directly the protection of his patron and his clan, and indirectly that of the state. A large number of clients attached themselves to and received protection from the king as patron—“royal clients,” as Cicero calls them.
The plebeians (plebs, from πλῆθος, meaning crowd), as distinguished from the clients, must be regarded as a heterogeneous Plebeians. mass of non-gentile freemen. It used to be plebeians the prevailing opinion among modern writers, following the Roman historians, that the plebeians existed as a body since the very beginning of the city. They were thought to be mainly composed of immigrants and refugees who, while being allowed personal liberty, declined to submit themselves to a patron. But recently a theory of Mommsen, based on solid philological and other grounds, has obtained wide adhesion and tends to become the dominant one. Mommsen's view is that at first there were only two classes in the community, the patricians and clients, or, in other words, that the only plebeians were the clients who, as such, possessed only quasi-liberty (Halbfreiheit), and that it was not till after a century or two that the practice of voluntary client age began to decay and the class of plebeian freemen arose. This was partly due to gentes dying out, so that the clients attached to them were left without patrons; partly to the numbers of foreigners at Rome (through transplantation of the inhabitants of conquered cities and otherwise) having become so large that they felt themselves sufficiently powerful to do without protection; and partly to other causes.[3]
However this be, it is generally admitted that, during the latter part of the present epoch at least, plebeians existed as a body composed of individuals of mixed races not united by any gentile organizations of their own nor attached to any Roman gentes. Tradition attributes to Numa the formation of gilds or societies of craftsmen, such as potters, carpenters, gold- and silver-smiths (collegia opifcum) at Rome, eight or nine in number. This, though probably a myth as regards Numa, may be taken as slight evidence of the creation among the plebeians of associations for trade and other purposes, that to some extent compensated them for the want of gentile organization. These gilds seem to have had a common cult and a common council to arrange disputes and consolidate customs. Between the brethren (sodales) there was a bond of close alliance and interdependence, each owing duty to the other similar to what might be claimed from a guest or a kinsman.
The Regulatives of Public and Private Order.—It would be absurd to expect any definite system of law in those early times. What passed for it was a composite of fas, jus and boni mores, whose several limits and characteristics it is extremely difficult to define. This may to some extent be accounted for by the fact that much of what was originally within the domain of fas, once it had come to be enforced by secular tribunals, and thus had the sanction of human authority, was no longer distinguishable from jus; while it may be that others of its behests, once pontifical punishments for their contravention had gone into desuetude, sank to nothing higher than precepts of boni mores.
- ↑ The derivation of the name is uncertain, and ancient writers differed about it. It probably comes either from quiris, a Sabine word for a spear, or from curia. The derivation from Cures is inadmissible. See Mommsen, Röm. Staatsrecht (1887, 1888), iii. 1, p. 5 n.
- ↑ The derivation of cliens from cluere indicates the relationship—one who is called on, who hearkens. The theory that clientage arose from the voluntary subjection of poorer citizens to the rich is an hypothesis supported by no satisfactory authority.
- ↑ Mommsen, Staatsrecht, iii. 1, pp. 66 seq. and pp. 127 seq. For a different view, Karlowa, Röm. Rechtsgeschichte, i. 62. Cf. Cuq, Instit. jurid. des Romains (2nd ed., 1904-8), i. 11-12.
