§179. Mutual Obligations.--The relation between the patrician patrons and the plebeian clients is not now thoroughly understood; the problems connected with it seem beyond solution. We know that it was hereditary and that the great houses boasted of the number of their clients and were eager to increase them from generation to generation. We know that it was regarded as something peculiarly sacred, that the client stood to the patron as little less than a son. Vergil tells us that a special punishment in the underworld awaited the patron who defrauded a client. We read, too, of instances of splendid loyalty to their patrons on the part of clients, a loyalty to which we can only compare in modern times that of Highlanders to the chief of their clan. But when we try to get an idea of the reciprocal duties and obligations we find little in our authorities that is definite (§12, end). The patron furnished means of support for the client and his family (§177), gave him the benefit of his advice and counsel, and assisted him in his transactions with third parties, representing him if necessary in the courts. On the other hand the client was bound to advance the interests of his patron in every possible way. He tilled his fields, herded his flocks, attended him in war, and assisted him in special emergencies with money. §180. It is evident that the mutuality of this relation depended solely upon the predominant position of the patron in the state. So long as the patricians were the only full citizens, so long, that is, as the plebeians had no civil rights, the client might well afford to sacrifice his personal independence for the sake of the countenance and protection of one of the mighty. In the case of disputes over property, for example, the support of his patron would assure him justice even against a patrician, and might secure more than justice were his opponent a plebeian without another such advocate. It is evident, too, that the relation could not long endure after the equalization of the orders. For a generation or two the patron and the client might stand together against their old adversaries, but sooner or later the client would see that he was getting no equivalent for the service he rendered, and his children or his children's children would throw off the yoke. The introduction of slavery, on the other hand, helped to make the patron independent of the client, and while we can hardly tell whether its rapid growth (§129) was the cause or the effect of declining clientage, it is nevertheless significant that the new relation of _patrōnus_ and _lībertus_ (§175) marks the disappearance of that of _patrōnus_ and _cliēns_ in the old and better sense of the words.