easily be extended to the entire privileged circle, meaning those with hereditary right to authority over the rest of the community.[107] Though in the sources the patres are generally senators the word is sometimes synonymous with patricii.[108] Regarding patricius the Romans reasoned with somewhat less care. They were right in deriving it from pater, but they made it signify “descended from,” whereas in fact it means “belonging to,”[109] and designates accordingly the families of the political patres. Probably it was formed after patres began to be applied to the entire governing class—a development which would tend to throw the latter word back to its earlier and narrower sense. Had the investigation of these words on the part of the ancients rested at this point, all would have been well; but an unfortunate guess as to the derivation of patricii by some unknown antiquarian has brought into the study of the social ranks unutterable confusion lasting down to the present day. This conjecture derives patricius from patrem ciere, making it signify “one who can cite a father.” The attempted etymology, clearly a failure, would perhaps have been harmless, had it not connected itself with the ambiguous word ingenuus. Cincius[110] says, “Those used to be called patricians who are now called ingenui.” Livy has the two ideas in mind when he represents a plebeian orator as inquiring, “Have ye never heard it said that those first created patricians were not beings sent down from heaven, but such as could cite their fathers, that is, nothing more than ingenui? I can now cite my father—a consul—and my son will be able to cite a grandfather.”[111] There should be no doubt as to the meaning of these passages; the antiquarian who conjectured that patricius was derived from patrem ciere, and therefore defined patricii as those who could cite their fathers, meant merely those who had distinguished fathers, and hence were of respectable birth. Ordinarily in extant Latin literature ingenui are simply the freeborn; and in making Appius Claudius Crassus in 368 include in the term the whole body of citizens Livy[112] dates this meaning back to the period before the Licinian-Sextian laws. Elsewhere are indications that in early times ingenui connoted rather respectable birth, and so applied especially to the patricians.[113] The quotations from Cincius and the attempted derivation of patricius from patrem ciere, accordingly, are sufficiently explained without resorting to the strange hypothesis, held by some, that in primitive Rome the patricians were the only men of free birth.