Historical Introduction to the Private Law of Rome (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: selves as free vassals. The relationship was known as that of patron and client. It made the latter an independent member of his patron's gens, and thus indirectly brought him into relation to the state. But it was to his individual patron that he looked primarily for support and maintenance, and to him that his allegiance and service were due in the first instance. Dionysius describes the relation between them as of the most sacred character, the duty the patron owed to his client coming next in order to that he owed to his children and his wards.2 He had to provide his vassal with all that was necessary for his sustenance and that of his wife and children; and, as private holdings increased in extent, it was not unusual for the patron or his gens to give a client during pleasure a plot of land to cultivate for himself. The patron had, moreover, to assist his client in his transactions with third parties, obtain redress for him for his injuries, and represent him before the tribunals when he became involved in litigation. The client, on the other hand, had to maintain his patron's interests by every means in his power. What Dionysius says of his contributing to endow hifl patron's daughters, and the like, obviously refers to an advanced period of the history of Rome, when it sometimes happened that the position of parties, so far as wealth was concerned, was reversed; for the relation was hereditary on both sides; and there may have been instances of families that had risen to good social position and ample fortune recognising at the dis- tance of many generations that they were still clients of patrician houses in embarrassed circumstances, and rendering them assistance as in duty bound. But in the regal period the advantage must have been chiefly on the side of the client, who,...