The three social classes of freemen—plebeians, patricians, and clients—were formed within the citizen body by official recognition of existing distinctions not of nationality but of worth. The first step in the process was the differentiation of the patricians from the plebeians. According to Cicero, Romulus constituted a number of chief men into a royal council, the senate, whose members he so highly esteemed as to have them called patres, and their children patricians.[85] Cicero thinks of the multitude as existing at first without a politically recognized nobility, yet showing natural distinctions of worth. By calling into the senate the ablest and best men, the state ennobled them and their families.[86] Livy’s[87] view is similar: Romulus selected from the multitude a hundred senators, whom he named patres, and whose descendants were called patricians. They were chosen because of their wisdom;[88] on that ground the state granted them nobility,[89] which accordingly in Rome, as in every early community, was founded on personal merit.[90] In the more detailed theory of Dionysius,[91] Romulus “distinguished those who were eminent for their birth and celebrated for their virtue, and whom he knew to be rich in the account of those times and who had children, from the obscure and mean and poor. The lower class he called plebeians, Greek δημοτικοί, and the higher patres, either because they were older than the others, or had children, or were of higher birth, or for all these reasons.... The most trustworthy historians of the Roman constitution assert that owing to these facts they were called patres and their descendants patricians.” According to Plutarch,[92] “Romulus, after forming the army, employed the rest of the people as the citizen body (δῆμος); the multitude he called populus, and appointed a hundred nobles to be councillors, whom he called patricians, and their assembly the senate.”[93]
There can be no doubt, therefore, as to the opinion of the ancient writers. They believed that from the beginning social distinctions existed naturally within the populus Romanus, and that these distinctions were made the basis of an official division of the people into nobles and commons, patricii and plebs, by the government. This view is not only reasonable in itself, but is supported, as we shall see, by analogies drawn from many other states.
All the sources make the patriciate depend upon connection with the senate, Dionysius alone showing some inconsistency on this point.[94] Why the senators were called patres the ancients give various reasons. Cicero[95] thinks patres a term of endearment; Sallust[96] believes that the name was applied either because of age or because of the similarity of their duty; Livy[97] sets it down as a title of honor; Festus[98] thinks chiefly of their age and wisdom; Paulus,[99] his epitomator, suggests that they were so called because they divided their lands among the poorer class as fathers among children; Dionysius[100] gives three possible reasons, (1) greater age, (2) possession of children, (3) family reputation. The sources generally agree in representing the patres as men who in age, honor, authority and duty stood toward the rest of the citizens as a father toward his children, and in identifying these social-political patres with the senators.[101] An examination of the word itself will tend to confirm the ancient view. It seems to have originally signified “protector,” “keeper,” “nourisher,”[102] hence “owner,” “master.” Pater familias is nourisher, protector, and master of a household.[103] In late Roman law the term continued to refer not necessarily to actual parentage but rather to the legal position of the head of a household;[104] in fact it is only in a distantly derived sense that pater comes to signify the male parent. Ideas early attaching to the word, accordingly, are those of power or authority and age. The senate, as this word indicates, was originally made up of elderly men, senatores, maiores natu.[105] It would be natural to call them patres because of their authority over the community or of their age. As a designation of rank, pater, excepting in jest, is always plural—an indication that the authority and dignity did not attach to the individual noble but to the senators collectively; they were collectively patres of the community, not individually patres of children, clients or gentes.[106] But when in time a limited number of families monopolized the senate, the term could easily be extended to the entire privileged circle, meaning those with hereditary right to authority over the rest of the community.[107] Though in the sources the patres are generally senators the word is sometimes synonymous with patricii.[108]
Regarding patricius the Romans reasoned with somewhat less care. They were right in deriving it from pater, but they made it signify “descended from,” whereas in fact it means “belonging to,”[109] and designates accordingly the families of the political patres. Probably it was formed after patres began to be applied to the entire governing class—a development which would tend to throw the latter word back to its earlier and narrower sense.
Had the investigation of these words on the part of the ancients rested at this point, all would have been well; but an unfortunate guess as to the derivation of patricii by some unknown antiquarian has brought into the study of the social ranks unutterable confusion lasting down to the present day. This conjecture derives patricius from patrem ciere, making it signify “one who can cite a father.” The attempted etymology, clearly a failure, would perhaps have been harmless, had it not connected itself with the ambiguous word ingenuus. Cincius[110] says, “Those used to be called patricians who are now called ingenui.” Livy has the two ideas in mind when he represents a plebeian orator as inquiring, “Have ye never heard it said that those first created patricians were not beings sent down from heaven, but such as could cite their fathers, that is, nothing more than ingenui? I can now cite my father—a consul—and my son will be able to cite a grandfather.”[111] There should be no doubt as to the meaning of these passages; the antiquarian who conjectured that patricius was derived from patrem ciere, and therefore defined patricii as those who could cite their fathers, meant merely those who had distinguished fathers, and hence were of respectable birth. Ordinarily in extant Latin literature ingenui are simply the freeborn; and in making Appius Claudius Crassus in 368 include in the term the whole body of citizens Livy[112] dates this meaning back to the period before the Licinian-Sextian laws. Elsewhere are indications that in early times ingenui connoted rather respectable birth, and so applied especially to the patricians.[113] The quotations from Cincius and the attempted derivation of patricius from patrem ciere, accordingly, are sufficiently explained without resorting to the strange hypothesis, held by some, that in primitive Rome the patricians were the only men of free birth.
In summarizing the ancient view as to the origin and nature of the patriciate, it will be enough to say that the king chose from the people men who were eminent for the experience of age, for ability and reputation, to sit in his council, the senate; the men so distinguished were called patres, whereas the adjective patricius applied as well to their families—the patricii being those who could cite illustrious fathers.[114] From this point of view the Roman nobility did not differ from that of most other countries.
The plebs,[115] then, were the mass of common freemen, from whom the nobility was differentiated in the way described above. From the ancient point of view they existed from the beginning, prior even to the patriciate itself.
It is equally true that in the opinion of the ancients the plebs were prior to the clients. Cicero[116] records that Romulus distributed the plebs in clientage among the chief men; Dionysius[117] adds that he gave the plebeians liberty to choose their patrons from among the patricians. Thus far their view is in complete accord with modern sociology, which teaches that such class distinctions first arise through the differentiation of freemen. Although aware of the fact that clientage existed in other states which were presumably older than Rome,[118] her historians doubtless felt that the institution could have been legalized in their own country by recognition only on the part of the government. They did not, however, work out a consistent theory of the relation between this class and the plebeians. Certain passages[119] hint, though they do not expressly assert, that at one epoch all the plebeians were in clientage, whereas in their accounts of political struggles the ancient writers uniformly array clients against plebeians almost from the beginning of the state.[120] The latter view is historically better founded.
There must have been various origins of clientage, with corresponding gradations of privilege. The libertini were citizens with straitly limited rights; other clients, certainly the greater part of the class, not only followed their patron to war[121] and to the forum,[122] but also testified and brought accusations in the courts[123] and voted in the assemblies;[124] and when the plebeians gained the right to hold offices the clients were admitted along with them to the same privilege.[125] In his relation with the state, therefore, the ordinary client did not differ essentially from the plebeian.