Clientage is a very old Roman institution. The kings and nobles of Rome in the very twilight of history had their clients. Those were the days when poor plebeians had little or no legal protection unless they enlisted the patronage of a magnate. They entered his _gens_ (inner-clan), followed him in war, voted (when they obtained the vote) in his interest, assisted him in certain money matters, in short, became members of his household although very much better off than the slaves. In return the patron was bound to defend their legal rights in the courts and to protect them from all forms of outrage. Men were proud to confess themselves as clients of a Fabius or an Æmilius. But by the end of the Republic the institution had practically disappeared in its original form. There was little legal discrimination then against poor citizens, and about all the real clients who now remained were freedmen, who, as just seen, were bound to be loyal and helpful to their _patroni_. =127. The New Parasitical Clientage: the Morning Salutation.=--Now, however, a new and wholly parasitical clientage has come into being. Early every morning the clients can be seen hurrying down Mercury Street in their hastily donned togas. Sometimes a patron lives a great distance across the city; sometimes a fawning myrmidon hopes to visit _two_ patrons in the same morning and get a double reward. Calvus does not rejoice in a great horde of clients, but being a senator his dignity requires that he should maintain perhaps a score of them. These clients are an assorted lot. Some are merely cheap hangers-on, some are adventurers visiting Rome and expecting to prosper by earning the favor of the great, there is also a mediocre poet who hopes for a tidy gift some day because of laudatory verses about his “Rex” and the latter’s family, there are several distant relatives of the Calvi, poor relations to whom the doles are a form of pension; and finally there are two or three men of good family and tolerable incomes who actually dance attendance on Calvus just to get a little extra pocket money. [Illustration: CLIENTS GATHERING IN THE RAIN, BEFORE THEIR PATRON’S DOOR. _After Von Falke._] The clients gather in the vestibule at dawn, rubbing their eyes, rearranging their hastily donned togas, and each trying to induce the not very civil porter to permit him to enter first. At last the word is passed to the door that, “The patron is ready.” The valves open; the clients swarm inside together. Publius Calvus dressed for the morning is standing in the rear of his atrium, just behind the pool of the impluvium. At his elbow is his nomenclator, the slave who “knows everybody,” to whisper a name in case he should not connect it promptly with a face. “_Ave, patrone, ave!_” cries each client coming up in turn. “_Ave, Marce!_” or “_Sexte!_” or “_Lucie!_” answers Calvus with a more or less formal smile.