From the preceding examination of the social ranks it at once becomes evident that the ancients made the populus comprise both patricians and plebeians; in further proof of their view may be cited the following juristic definition: “Plebs differs from populus in that by the word populus all the citizens are meant, including even the patricians, whereas plebs signifies the rest of the citizens, excepting the patricians.”[126] Since the sources generally consider the patricians the descendants of the hundred original senators,[127] they cannot help regarding the populus as composed chiefly of plebeians. In common speech the term, like our word people, often applies to the lower class as distinguished from the higher, in which sense it is interchangeable with plebs; often, too, it signifies the people in contrast with the senate.[128] It is clear, then, as Mommsen has pointed out,[129] that if populus signifies first the whole body of citizens and secondly the commons as distinguished from the nobles, it could not possibly have as a third equivalent the patricians as distinguished from the plebeians. In certain formulae found in addresses, wills, prayers, and oracles, populus is so joined with plebs (populus plebesque or the like) as to suggest the possible meaning patricians.[130] The combination of the two words with senatus,[131] however, reveals at once the overlapping of the terms so joined. In these passages reference is to the modes by which an individual may approach the state; he may address the consuls, praetors, or plebeian tribunes, and in the same way the senate, populus, or plebs.[132] Hence in these formulae, merely representing groups of institutions through which the state is accustomed to act, the word populus does not apply solely to the patricians, and the same may be said of its use in all other connections. We may conclude, therefore, that the Latin language gives no hint of an exclusively patrician populus. Regarding the populus as made up of patricians, plebeians, and clients, our sources necessarily ascribe the same social composition to its divisions, the three old tribes and the thirty curiae.[133] With perfect consistency they mention repeated enlargements of the populus and of the tribes and curiae, through the admission of masses of aliens, most of whom must have remained plebeian. In fact the sources uniformly represent all the kings as freely admitting conquered aliens without exception to the citizenship and to the tribes and the curiae, even compelling some forcibly to enter this condition.[134]