This word _familia_ did not mean exactly what we mean by family; household would perhaps come nearer to it, if we understand by household a group of individuals supporting itself on the land. It meant not only father, mother, and children, but also their dependents, whether bond or free. These, if bond, were slaves (_servi_), prisoners of war and the children of such prisoners, or persons who had forfeited their liberty by debt: if free, they were clients, who for some reason had become attached to the _familia_ in an inferior position, and looked to it for subsistence and protection. And our picture is not complete unless we take into account also the divine members of the group, dwelling in the house or on the land, to whom the human members looked for protection and prosperity in all the walks of life. Chief among these were the spirit of the hearth-fire, Vesta; Penates, the spirits of the store-closet and its contents: the Lar, the guardian spirit of the cultivated land, or, as some think, of a departed ancestor; and the Genius of the head of the family, which enabled him to beget children and so continue the collective life of the group. Though these spirits—they are hardly yet deities—naturally seem to us mere fancies of the primitive Roman mind, they were to that mind itself as real and active as any human member of the group, and we must try to think of them as such, for they played a very important part in the development of the quality we wish to realise. Now this group, or rather the human part of it, lived under a very simple and effective form of government. It was under the absolute control of a head, the father and husband; or, if more than one family lived together, the oldest living father and husband. Over wife and children he had a father’s power (_patria potestas_), and they were said to be in his _hand_; over the slaves he had a master’s power (_dominium_): to his clients he was _patronus_, or quasi-father. His power over wife and children was absolute, but it was kept from being arbitrary by a wholesome custom, of immense importance in all its results throughout Roman history, of seeking the advice of a council of relations before taking any extreme step in the way of punishment for serious offences. This was an obligation, a duty, on his part, enforced by no law, but by what may be well called an even more powerful sovereign than law—the custom of the ancestors (_mos majorum_). His power over his client, or his freed slave if he had any such, was restrained by customs of mutual obligation, which eventually found their way into law. His power over his slaves was, however, not only absolute but arbitrary, and so continued down to the latest period of Roman history; yet the slave, we must not forget, was really a member of the _familia_, and as such was probably treated as a human being, necessary to the life of the group, and even partaking to some extent in its religious worship.