*Patrons and clients.* Apparently, the clients were tenants who tilled the estates of the patricians, to whom they stood for a long time in a condition of economic and political dependence. Each head of a patrician household was the patron of the clients who resided on his lands. The clients were obliged to follow their patrons to war and to the political arena, to render them respectful attention, and, on occasion, pecuniary support. The patron, in his turn, was obliged to protect the life and interests of his client. For either patron or client to fail in his obligations was held to be sacrilege. This relationship, called _patronatus_ on the side of the patron, _clientela_ on that of the client, was hereditary on both sides. The origin of this form of clientage is uncertain and it is impossible for us to form a very exact idea of position of the clients in the early Roman state, for the like-named institution of the historic republican period is by no means the one that prevailed at the end of the monarchy. The older, serf-like, conditions had disappeared; the relationship was voluntarily assumed, and its obligations, now of a much less serious nature, depended for their observance solely upon the interest of both parties. The patrician aristocracy formed a social caste, the product of a long period of social development, and this caste was enlarged in early times by the recognition of new _gentes_ as possessing the qualifications of the older clans (_patres maiorum_ and _minorum gentium_). But eventually it became a closed order, jealous of its prerogatives and refusing to intermarry with the non-patrician element. *The Plebs.* This latter constituted the plebeians or _plebs_. They were free citizens—the less wealthy landholders, tradesmen, craftsmen, and laborers—who lacked the right to sit in the Senate and so had no direct share in the administration. Beyond question, however, they were included in the _curiae_ and had the right to vote in the _comitia curiata_. Nor is there any proof of a racial difference between plebeians and patricians. It is not easy to determine to what degree the clients participated in the political life of the community, yet, in the general use of the term, the plebs included the clients, who later, under the republic, shared in all the privileges won by the plebeians and who, consequently, must have had the status of plebeians in the eye of the state. The sharp social and political distinction between nobles and commons, between patricians and plebeians, is the outstanding feature of early Roman society, and affords the clue to the political development of the early republican period. [Illustration: Roman Expansion in Italy to 265 B. C.] CHAPTER V THE EXPANSION OF ROME TO THE UNIFICATION OF THE ITALIAN PENINSULA: c. 509–265 B. C. I. TO THE CONQUEST OF VEII—392 B. C.