r to provide for his own people and to protect
them acquired a greater importance in the case of the client, who
was practically in a more free position, than in the case of the
slave. Especially must the -de facto- freedom of the client have
approximated to freedom -de jure- in those cases where the relation
had subsisted for several generations: when the releaser and the
released had themselves died, the -dominium- over the descendants
of the released person could not be without flagrant impiety claimed
by the heirs at law of the releaser; and thus there was gradually
formed within the household itself a class of persons in dependent
freedom, who were different alike from the slaves and from the
members of the -gens- entitled in the eye of the law to full and
equal rights.

The Roman Community

On this Roman household was based the Roman state, as respected
both its constituent elements and its form. The community of the
Roman people arose out of the junction (in whatever way brought
about) of such ancient clanships as the Romilii, Voltinii, Fabii,
etc.; the Roman domain comprehended the united lands of those
clans.(3) Whoever belonged to one of these clans was a burgess
of Rome. Every marriage concluded in the usual forms within this
circle was valid as a true Roman marriage, and conferred burgess-rights
on the children begotten of it. Whoever was begotten in an illegal
marriage, or out of marriage, was excluded from the membership of
the community. On this account the Roman burgesses assumed the name
of the "father's children" (-patricii-), inasmuch as they alone in
the eye of the law had a father. The clans with all the families
that they contained were incorporated with the state just as
they stood. The spheres of the household and the clan continued
to subsist within the state; but the position which a man held in
these did not affect his relations towards the state. The son was
subject to the father within the household, but in political duties
and rights he stood on a footing of equality. The position of the
protected dependents was naturally so far changed that the freedmen
and clients of every patron received on his account toleration in
the community at large; they continued indeed to be immediately
dependent on the protection of the family to which they belonged,
but the very nature of the case implied that the clients of members
of the community could not be wholly excluded from its worshi