A Smaller Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities

by William Smith

PĂTER PĂTRĀTUS. [[Fetiales].]

PĂTĔRA, dim. PĂTELLA (φιάλη), a round plate or dish. The paterae of the most common kind were small plates of the common red earthenware, on which an ornamental pattern was drawn, and which were sometimes entirely black. The more valuable paterae were metallic, being chiefly of bronze; but every family, raised above poverty, possessed one of silver, together with a silver salt-cellar. The accompanying cut exhibits a highly ornamented patera, made of bronze. The view of the upper surface is accompanied by a side-view, showing the form and depth of the vessel.

Patera. (From Pompeii.)

PĂTĬBŬLUM. [[Furca].]

PĂTĬNA (λεκάνη), a basin or bowl of earthenware, rarely of bronze or silver. The patina was of a form intermediate between the patera and the olla, not so flat as the former, nor so deep as the latter. The most frequent use of the patina was in cookery.

PATRES. [[Patricii].]

PĂTRĬA POTESTAS. Potestas signifies generally a power or faculty of any kind by which we do anything. “Potestas,” says Paulus, a Roman jurist, “has several significations: when applied to magistrates, it is Imperium; in the case of children, it is the patria potestas; in the case of slaves, it is Dominium.” According to Paulus then, potestas, as applied to magistrates, is equivalent to imperium. Thus we find potestas associated with the adjectives praetoria, consularis. But potestas is applied to magistrates who had not the imperium, as for instance to quaestors and tribuni plebis; and potestas and imperium are often opposed in Cicero. [[Imperium].] Thus it seems that this word potestas, like many other Roman terms, had both a wider signification and a narrower one. In its wider signification it might mean all the power that was delegated to any person by the state, whatever might be the extent of that power. In its narrower significations, it was on the one hand equivalent to imperium; and on the other, it expressed the power of those functionaries who had not the imperium. Sometimes it was used to express a magistratus, as a person; and hence in the Italian language the word podestà signifies a magistrate. Potestas is also one of the words by which is expressed the power that one private person has over another, the other two being manus and mancipium. The potestas is either dominica, that is, ownership as exhibited in the relation of master and slave [[Servus]]; or patria as exhibited in the relation of father and child. The mancipium was framed after the analogy of the potestas dominica. [[Mancipium].] Patria potestas then signifies the power which a Roman father had over the persons of his children, grandchildren, and other descendants (filii-familias, filiae-familias), and generally all the rights which he had by virtue of his paternity. The foundation of the patria potestas was a legal marriage, and the birth of a child gave it full effect. [[Matrimonium].] It does not seem that the patria potestas was ever viewed among the Romans as absolutely equivalent to the dominica potestas, or as involving ownership of the child; and yet the original notion of the patria came very near to that of the dominica potestas. Originally the father had the power of life and death over his son as a member of his familia; and he could sell him, and so bring him into the mancipii causa. He could also give his daughter in marriage, or give a wife to his son, divorce his child, give him in adoption, and emancipate him at his pleasure.

PATRĬCĬI. This word is evidently a derivative from pater, which frequently occurs in the Roman writers as equivalent to senator. Patricii therefore signifies those who belonged to the patres, but it is a mistake to suppose that the patricii were only the offspring of the patres in the sense of senators. On the contrary, the patricians were, in the early history of Rome, the whole body of Roman citizens, the populus Romanus, and there were no real citizens besides them. The other parts of the Roman population, namely clients and slaves, did not belong to the populus Romanus, and were not burghers or patricians. The senators or patres (in the narrower sense of the word) were a select body of the populus or patricians, which acted as their representatives. The burghers or patricians consisted originally of three distinct tribes, which afterwards became united into the sovereign populus. These tribes had founded settlements upon several of the hills which were subsequently included within the precincts of the city of Rome. Their names were Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres, or Ramnenses, Titienses, and Lucerenses. Each of these tribes consisted of ten curiae, and each curia of ten gentes, and of the same number of decuries, which were established for representative and military purposes. [[Senatus].] The first tribe, or the Ramnes, were a Latin colony on the Palatine hill, said to have been founded by Romulus. As long as it stood alone, it contained only one hundred gentes, and had a senate of one hundred members. When the Tities, or Sabine settlers on the Quirinal and Viminal hills, under king Tatius, became united with the Ramnes, the number of gentes, as well as that of senators, was increased to 200. These two tribes after their union continued probably for a considerable time to be the patricians of Rome, until the third tribe, the Luceres, which chiefly consisted of Etruscans, who had settled on the Caelian hill, also became united with the other two as a third tribe. The amalgamation of these three tribes did not take place at once: the union between Latins and Sabines is ascribed to the reign of Romulus, though it does not appear to have been quite perfect, since the Latins on some occasions claimed a superiority over the Sabines. The Luceres existed for a long time as a separate tribe without enjoying the same rights as the two other tribes, until Tarquinius Priscus, himself an Etruscan, caused them to be placed on a footing of equality with the others. For this reason he is said to have increased the number of senators to 300. The Luceres, however, are, notwithstanding this equalisation, sometimes distinguished from the other tribes by the name patres or patricii minorum gentium. During the time of the republic, distinguished strangers and wealthy plebeians were occasionally made Roman patricians; for instance, Appius Claudius and his gens, and Domitius Ahenobarbus. When the plebeians became a distinct class of citizens [[Plebes]], the patricians, of course, ceased to be the only class of citizens, but they still retained the exclusive possession of all the power in the state. All civil and religious offices were in their possession, and they continued as before to be the populus, the nation now consisting of the populus and the plebes. In their relation to the plebeians or the commonalty, the patricians were a real aristocracy of birth. A person born of a patrician family was and remained a patrician, whether he was rich or poor, whether he was a member of the senate, or an eques, or held any of the great offices of the state, or not: there was no power that could make a patrician a plebeian. As regards the census, he might indeed not belong to the wealthy classes, but his rank remained the same. The only way in which a patrician might become a plebeian was when of his own accord he left his gens and curia, gave up the sacra, &c. A plebeian, on the other hand, or even a stranger, might be made a patrician by a lex curiata. But this appears to have been done very seldom; and the consequence was, that in the course of a few centuries the number of patrician families became so rapidly diminished, that towards the close of the republic there were not more than fifty such families. Although the patricians throughout this whole period had the character of an aristocracy of birth, yet their political rights were not the same at all times. During the first centuries of the republic there was an almost uninterrupted struggle between patricians and plebeians, in which the former exerted every means to retain their exclusive rights, but which ended in the establishment of the political equality of the two orders. [[Plebes].] Only a few insignificant priestly offices, and the performance of certain ancient religious rites and ceremonies, remained the exclusive privilege of the patricians; of which they were the prouder, as in former days their religious power and significance were the basis of their political superiority. At the time when the struggle between patricians and plebeians ceased, a new kind of aristocracy began to arise at Rome, which was partly based upon wealth, and partly upon the great offices of the republic, and the term nobiles was given to all persons whose ancestors had held any of the curule offices. (Compare [Nobiles].) This aristocracy of nobiles threw the old patricians as a body still more into the shade, though both classes of aristocrats united as far as was possible to monopolise all the great offices of the state. In their dress and appearance the patricians were scarcely distinguished from the rest of the citizens, unless they were senators, curule magistrates, or equites, in which case they wore like others the ensigns peculiar to these classes. The only thing by which they seem to have been distinguished in their appearance from other citizens was a peculiar kind of shoe, which covered the whole foot and part of the leg, though it was not as high as the shoes of senators and curule magistrates. These shoes were fastened with four strings (corrigiae or lora patricia) and adorned with a lunula on the top.

PĂTRĪMI ET MĀTRĪMI were children born of parents, who had been married by the religious ceremony called confarreatio: they are almost always mentioned in connection with religious rites and ceremonies.