rgesses in the Roman community persons who
were protected, the "listeners" (-clientes-), as they were called
from their being dependents on the several burgess-households, or
the "multitude" (-plebes-, from -pleo-, -plenus-), as they were
termed negatively with reference to their want of political rights.(1)
The elements of this intermediate stage between the freeman and
the slave were, as has been shown(2) already in existence in the
Roman household: but in the community this class necessarily acquired
greater importance -de facto- and -de jure-, and that from two
reasons. In the first place the community might itself possess
half-free clients as well as slaves; especially after the conquest
of a town and the breaking up of its commonwealth it might often
appear to the conquering community advisable not to sell the mass
of the burgesses formally as slaves, but to allow them the continued
possession of freedom -de facto-, so that in the capacity as it
were of freedmen of the community they entered into relations of
clientship whether to the clans, or to the king. In the second
place by means of the community and its power over the individual
burgesses, there was given the possibility of protecting the clients
against an abusive exercise of the -dominium- still subsisting in
law. At an immemorially early period there was introduced into
Roman law the principle on which rested the whole legal position
of the --metoeci--, that, when a master on occasion of a public
legal act--such as in the making of a testament, in an action at law,
or in the census--expressly or tacitly surrendered his -dominium-,
neither he himself nor his lawful successors should ever have power
arbitrarily to recall that resignation or reassert a claim to the
person of the freedman himself or of his descendants. The clients
and their posterity did not by virtue of their position possess
either the rights of burgesses or those of guests: for to constitute
a burgess a formal bestowal of the privilege was requisite on the
part of the community, while the relation of guest presumed the
holding of burgess-rights in a community which had a treaty with
Rome. What they did obtain was a legally protected possession of
freedom, while they continued to be -de jure- non-free. Accordingly
for a lengthened period their relations in all matters of property
seem to have been, like those of slaves, regarded in law as
relations of the patron, so that it was neces