The free population of Rome as a developed city-state was composed of the two elements of Patricians and Plebeians. The ultimate source of this distinction, which is undoubtedly anterior to the foundation of the city, can only be a matter of conjecture; but the origin of the Patriciate may probably be explained as the result partly of earlier settlement, partly of superior military prowess. The warriors within the pale receive the new settlers, but only on certain conditions; these conditions are perpetuated and become a permanent badge of inferiority. The happiest guess of the many made by Roman antiquarians as to the origin of the Patricians was that they were originally the “free-born” men (_ingenui_), the men who could point to fathers (_patres_) and in their turn become full heads of families[15]—the men in short who, at a time when the family with its juristic head, and not the mere individual, was the true unit of life, were the only full citizens of Rome. Such men alone could be partners in the true ownership of property, or sue and be sued in their own right,[16] and such an exclusive right to a full personality in private law they claimed in virtue of their public services or privileges—the duty of taking the field on horseback or in heavy armour, the right of uplifting their voices in the assembly when they acclaimed a king or ratified a law. The whole free community, other than the _patres_ or Patricians, is regarded as the “complement” of the latter, “the multitude” (_plebs_, _plebeii_) which, with the fully privileged class, makes up the state.[17] It is possible that, in a very primitive stage of Roman history, these Plebeians may all have been in the half-servile condition of clientship; but, even when the earliest records of Rome are revealed to us, this has ceased to be the case. Not only has the son of the original client evolved a freedom of his own, but a man may _become_ a plebeian member of Rome without subjecting himself to the degradation of _clientela_. No less than five ways are described or can be imagined in which the non-citizen could become a citizen, and at least one of these reveals the possibility of the perfectly free Plebeian. In the old life of the _pagus_ and the _gens_, the weaker sought protection of the stronger by a willing vassalage, which ripened, when the state was formed, into the Plebeiate which had its origin in clientship. A similar position was ultimately gained by the descendant of the manumitted slave. The stranger (_hostis_) from a city which had no treaty relations with Rome, or no relations which guaranteed a mutual interchange of citizenship, must, if he wandered to this new home, also make application to a patron and become his client. It is less certain what was the fate of the inhabitants of a conquered city who were violently deported to Rome. The annalists, indeed, represent such men as being received into the citizen body, and as becoming members of the tribe and the