The Patricians were the aristocracy. Their influence rested upon their wealth as great landholders, their superiority in military equipment and training, their clan organization, and the support of their clients. Their position in the community assured to them political control, and they had early monopolized the right to sit in the Senate. The members of the Senate were called collectively patres, whence the name patricii (patricians) was given to all the members of their [pg 30]class. The patricians formed a group of many gentes, or clans, each an association of households (familiae) who claimed descent from a common ancestor. Each member of a gens bore the gentile name and had a right to participate in its religious practices (sacra).
Patrons and clients. Apparently, the clients were tenants who tilled the estates of the patricians, to whom they stood for a long time in a condition of economic and political dependence. Each head of a patrician household was the patron of the clients who resided on his lands. The clients were obliged to follow their patrons to war and to the political arena, to render them respectful attention, and, on occasion, pecuniary support. The patron, in his turn, was obliged to protect the life and interests of his client. For either patron or client to fail in his obligations was held to be sacrilege. This relationship, called patronatus on the side of the patron, clientela on that of the client, was hereditary on both sides. The origin of this form of clientage is uncertain and it is impossible for us to form a very exact idea of position of the clients in the early Roman state, for the like-named institution of the historic republican period is by no means the one that prevailed at the end of the monarchy. The older, serf-like, conditions had disappeared; the relationship was voluntarily assumed, and its obligations, now of a much less serious nature, depended for their observance solely upon the interest of both parties.
The patrician aristocracy formed a social caste, the product of a long period of social development, and this caste was enlarged in early times by the recognition of new gentes as possessing the qualifications of the older clans (patres maiorum and minorum gentium). But eventually it became a closed order, jealous of its prerogatives and refusing to intermarry with the non-patrician element.
The Plebs. This latter constituted the plebeians or plebs. They were free citizens—the less wealthy landholders, tradesmen, craftsmen, and laborers—who lacked the right to sit in the Senate and so had no direct share in the administration. Beyond question, however, they were included in the curiae and had the right to vote in the comitia curiata. Nor is there any proof of a racial difference between plebeians and patricians. It is not easy to determine to what degree the clients participated in the political life of the community, yet, in the general use of the term, the plebs included the clients, who later, under the republic, shared in all the privileges won by the [pg 31]plebeians and who, consequently, must have had the status of plebeians in the eye of the state.
The sharp social and political distinction between nobles and commons, between patricians and plebeians, is the outstanding feature of early Roman society, and affords the clue to the political development of the early republican period.
