clientship was strictly hereditary; but the bond must have become weaker with successive generations, after the evolution of plebeian rights, and at a time when clientes themselves possessed votes in the comitia curiata.[1] Nay, the Plebeian at this period may himself be a patron, and his attainment of full citizenship in private law must have been held to qualify him for this duty of protection. Yet the client body still continues to be recruited by new members; for the antique form of applicatio still exists, and the manumitted slave owes duties to his patron. We know too that in the fourth and third centuries the patronal rights over the freedman extended to the second generation.[2] A faint trace of hereditary clientship, based on a purely moral sanction, and accompanied perhaps by the performance of some of the duties of the old relationship, still exists in the second century. The family of Marius, we are told, had been clients of the plebeian Herennii, and some of the rights of the relationship were held to extend to him. But we are also told that at this period a principle was recognised that this bond was for ever broken by the client's attainment of curule office,[3] that is, by the ennoblement of him and his family. § 3. Roman Family Organisation—The Gens, the Familia, the Bondsman and the Slave—The Disposition of Property—The Conception of "Caput"
The clan (gens) was an aggregate of individuals supposed to
be sprung from a common source, a social union, with common
rights in private law, which had as its theoretical basis the
notion of descent from a single ancestor. According to the
juristic theory of the clan, all its individual members would, if
their descent could be traced through every degree, have sprung
from two individuals who were within the power of this ultimate
- [Footnote: eos proximum locum clientes habere, qui sese itidem in fidem patrociniumque
nostrum dediderunt." The third place was filled by hospites, the fourth by cognati and adfines.]
