From Rome’s earliest days a code of values had been established that within the hierarchy of social obligations privileged those linked to the fundamental space of the home and family by blood ties and patronage under various forms. The Roman citizen was not only subject to the law but was also a member of a network of personal relations that the law recognized. The patron-client relationship was central to the Roman cultural experience. According to tradition, its origin went back to Romulus himself, who had made it hereditary. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says of Romulus, ‘‘He gave the plebeians over to the patricians as a sacred trust, and permitted each of the common People to cultivate as patron whomever he wished... In this way he made the connection between them one both humane and worthy of citizens’’ (Ant. Rom. 2.9.2-3). Cicero underscores the attribution to Romulus as well, noting that ‘‘he had the common people enrolled as clients of the leading men’’ (Rep. 2.16).
The Romans formalized these relationships but passed on to us few precise accounts of them, which makes them difficult to study even though they have a significant place among their stock of cultural symbols. When Virgil in the Aeneid describes those awaiting their punishment in Tartarus (6.609), he allots a place right next to parricides to persons who had not respected their obligations toward their clients. Fustel de Coulanges, who was the first to use the terms ‘‘patronage’’ and ‘‘voluntary clientship’’ to describe these relationships of mutual obligation, noted that the expression ‘‘to be in the trust (fides) of another’’ was undoubtedly the most common formulation. It is in fact the word fides, sworn faith, which underlies these obligations. Both favors ( bene-ficia) and services, or marks of gratitude (officia), necessarily implied an ethic of reciprocity that influenced the persons involved and also their reputation, which was
Measured according to their respect for their private obligations and their ability to preserve the patronal networks passed down by their families.2
The exchange of services and benefits pertained not only to private morality but also to Roman public morality. Election to a Roman magistracy was perceived as a unanimous expression of the People who offered their vote as a favor, a collective beneficium, to the politician who sought it. It was the People’s beneficium that permitted one to attain the summit of glory by virtue of the honor of election (see also Chapters 17 and 18). The relationship of exchange between the People and the future magistrate is attested in our texts, which assert that the People were won over by the past beneficia of the candidate and the hope of more to come. Every electoral campaign illustrated the personal aspect of the relationship with the candidate, since anyone pursuing a campaign had to solicit the voters individually by emphasizing his past services, his previous actions that remained in the collective memory (see also Chapter 23). The relationship thus established was a form of community patronage.3
Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ view of Roman clientship was inspired by an idealized past, evoking concord and social cohesion. Writing in the Augustan period, he describes the relationship between patrons and clients in the Roman constitution’s earliest phase and portrays them as in a perfect form: there was such benevolence between the two parties that each did its best not to be surpassed by the other in this domain. Patrons explained the law to their clients, sought to protect them and not to impose any burden upon them. They were entitled to bring suits on behalf of their clients. Clients rendered services of all kinds to their patrons and assured them of their financial assistance: they contributed to the dowry of the patron’s daughter, they participated in collecting ransom for a patron who had been captured or a fine levied on a patron who had lost a suit, and they shared his expenses of public office. Patrons and clients could not vote against each other, nor could they bring a charge or testify in court against the other (Dion. Hal. Rom. Ant. 2.10). This picture was inspired by a social and political ideal of concord worked out later in accordance with aristocratic ideals favored in Rome in the first century BC. When Dionysius claims that it was impious and illegal for a client and patron to bring charges or give testimony against each other he takes up a formula expressed in the archaic law of the Twelve Tables asserting that a patron who harmed his client should become sacer, that is, devoted to the gods and therefore able to be killed with impunity (Crawford 1996b: 689-90, Tab. VIII. IO = Riccobono, FIRA XII Tab. 8.21). Assistance at law (or at least neutrality in the courts) was always a patron’s most important duty. Republican legislation also allowed for the exclusion ofpersons connected not only by blood but also by relations of fides from participation in legal proceedings against each other.
A specific example of this kind of exemption is well known to us because it involves the career of C. Marius. In 115, when Marius was on trial for electoral bribery and the prosecution called C. Herennius to testify, he refused, declaring that it was contrary to custom for a patron to give testimony against a client, adding that Marius’ parents and Marius himself had long been clients of the Herennii. According to Plutarch (Mar. 5.4.), Marius rejected the argument, declaring that once he had been elected to his first magistracy he had ceased to be a client - a claim that Plutarch corrects for his Greek readers, adding that not all magistracies freed one from obligations toward a patron, only the higher, so-called ‘‘curule’’ ones.4 This episode has been discussed at length by those interested in the archaic institution of clientship and its formal restrictions, in particular Theodor Mommsen.5 We see from this example that even at the end of the Republic respect for traditional patronal duties toward clients was supported by such a strong social consensus that they could constitute a valid excuse for a refusal to testify. On the other hand, a client’s inferior status disappeared when he had been elected to a high magistracy.
During this period, the word ‘‘client’’ was never attributed to a magistrate who held a magistracy with the power to command {imperium) - that is, consuls and praetors in the main - since attainment of this kind of office freed one from the traditional obligations of a client. On the other hand, it was not unknown for an eminent person who had held one of these offices to present himself as a client in order to obtain assistance. Such was the nature of a letter to Cicero written in 45 in which the proconsul P. Vatinius {consul in 47) pleads with the great orator to continue exercising his patronage over himself as his client: ‘‘If you maintain your customary care for your clientele, here I am, P. Vatinius, your client’’ {Cic. Fam. 5.9.1). Cicero had earlier defended him in court at the request of Caesar and Crassus in 54. He had become his patron in this trial. Legally Vatinius could no longer be Cicero’s client after his election to high office, but Vatinius insisted upon his dependence because he hoped thereby to gain Cicero’s protection. In 45 Vatinius was governor of Illyricum and seeking a triumph; he was canvassing the support of Cicero, a powerful senator of consular rank, in the hope of winning the Senate’s authorization.
This letter highlights the contradiction between formal rules and actual usage because it shows that it was permissible to suggest rather ostentatiously that a state of dependence persisted in order to continue receiving favors and services. It therefore demonstrates the impossibility of holding to the strict, formal usage of words in the study of Roman patronage and clientship.6 When we examine such terms as cliens, clientela, and patronus at the end of the Republic we are quickly checked by their infrequent occurrence: in Cicero, our main source, cliens is very rarely associated with the name of a person, and patronus typically denotes a person’s advocate in court, that is, the patronus causae? It is exceedingly uncommon for a man to refer to himself as someone’s client, and it was rare for Cicero to designate someone else as his own client. The language of social subordination could seem arrogant if it was used by a patron to express his superiority and the weakness of his client. The term amicus {‘‘friend’’) was much more honorable for the client than the literal term cliens. The very word necessarius {‘‘close connection’’), which was frequently used to denote a friend, placed emphasis on an exchange of services and on the duties that arose from a relationship of necessitudo {‘‘obligation’’ or ‘‘bond’’). The rarity of the words ‘‘patron’’ and ‘‘client’’ outside of the judicial context is no evidence of the weakening of the interpersonal ties that structured Roman society, but a sign rather that they had lost the strict, exclusionary character that they had once had in the archaic age. In the imperial period Romans were stih discussing the relative ranking of ties of kinship and clientship in the hierarchy of obligations that were imposed upon a Roman {Gell. NA 5.13). To define patronage I shall adopt a broad definition, one more sociological than judicial, borrowed from scholars who describe modes of behavior observable in contemporary Mediterranean societies in which a code of honor and loyalty is likewise apparent: ‘‘an asymmetrical, quasi-moral relation between a person (the patron) who directly provides protection and assistance (patronage), and/or who influences persons (clients) who depend on him for such assistance. Clients, in turn, provide loyalty and support when called on to do so.’’
At Rome, the institution of patronage (patrocinium) appeared in many forms and involved different types of relationships. Some involved those who had been citizens for a long time, others new citizens. Fides was hereditary, but it was also possible to enter into someone’s fides by statute, or voluntarily by a sort of personal contract. With the Roman conquest, military defeats were followed by a deditio (unconditional surrender) by the vanquished, who then entered the fides of the conqueror.
The example of Marius attests to the hereditary nature of the private ties between the Herennii and his family. At the end of the Republic it is difficult to trace the transmission of these personal attachments from one generation to another. However, Cicero’s letters of recommendation sometimes supply information about the long-standing nature of the relationship between Cicero and his correspondent, an antiquity asserted all the more strongly when services were being demanded from the one being solicited. Thus, the family of the Munatii Planci, local magnates from Tibur, were for a long time among the clients of Cicero; regarding two of its members he uses the expression ‘‘ancestral connection’’ (paterna necessitudo), and even invokes a bond to the entire household in a letter addressed to L. Munatius Plancus (Fam. 10.3.2,13.29). He cites this ‘‘ancestral connection’’ also in letters sent to L. Plotius Plancus, Munatius’ brother (Att. 16.16A, 16B). These two magistrates of the Caesarian age had a brother, T. Munatius Plancus Bursa, whom Cicero had defended in court. But this man gravely violated the pact of loyalty that linked his family to the orator. As tribune of the plebs in 52, he took the side of Clodius and accused a friend of Cicero’s. That is why, at a period when Cicero was pleading almost solely for the defense, he took the trouble to prosecute the man himself in a criminal trial.9
A relationship of patronage was also created between former master and ex-slave when, by the voluntary act of the owner, a slave was emancipated and thereby given liberty and citizenship. The master changed from the slave’s dominus (‘‘lord’’) into the new freedman’s patronus. The freedman, as recipient of the priceless gift of liberty, remained subject to the fides of his patron; he had at all times to behave in accordance with his obligation toward the one whose name he had adopted upon receiving Roman citizenship. Proof of this was his respect (obsequium) and the required services he owed his patron (operae) - the concrete marks of his devotion.10 This kind of patronage was imposed by another. But a free man could also request someone’s fides and freely enter into their clientele. The young jurist C. Trebatius Testa entrusted himself from his youth to the fides of Cicero, who saw to his education (Fam. 7.5.3, 7.17). Cicero subsequently recommended his client and student to Caesar, commander of the army in Gaul, so that he in turn might advance his protege’s career. In his letter to Caesar, in order to add solemnity to the recommendation, he evokes the symbolic transfer of clientage in the ancient manner, from his own hand to Caesar’s (Fam. 7.5). Originally, in fact, the custom ofpersonal recommendation, which perpetuated itselfto the end of the Republic in a less rigid form, formed a moral obligation and created a duty offides. Traditionally, the request to enter a state of clientship voluntarily was called applicatio (‘‘attachment’’). But the expression is very rarely used, in contrast to commendatio (‘‘act of entrusting’’).11 The etymology of the word commendare, ‘‘to entrust into the hand (manus),’’ or se commendare, ‘‘to entrust oneself into the hand,’’ indeed refers to the gesture (joining of right hands [ data dextera]) by which a request for assistance and protection was symbolized. This kind of commitment of one person to the care of another was often alluded to in critical moments in which the very life of the person who entrusted himself was in danger.1
Commitment into the fides of a patron by means of a symbolic gesture can also be seen in the pacts of hospitality that linked Romans and foreigners. A picture of this is given by the mythical example of the king of Latium, Latinus, who holds out his right hand as he welcomes Aeneas and the Trojans: ‘‘Latinus gave his right hand as a pledge of future friendship’’ (Livy 1.1.8). Ties of hospitality were often associated with the duties of a client. The guest-friends of senators and Roman magistrates were the most significant persons in the cities of Italy or of the provinces. In Greece as at Rome, a guest-friend was a person to whom one offered shelter and guaranteed security. For this welcome and protection reciprocity was expected. With characteristic attention to the concrete, the Roman would exchange with his guest-friend a token of this agreement, the tessera hospitalis, a small bronze object divided into two parts, one of which was retained by each of the parties.
When Rome extended its citizenship and became an empire, the patron-client relationship often made it possible to maintain the links that Rome had established with individuals and communities in Italy and the provinces. According to tradition, a Roman conqueror became the patron of the People he had conquered and this patronage passed on to his descendants. This is affirmed by Cicero: ‘‘among our people. . . those who had received states and peoples conquered in war into their power became, according to ancestral custom, their protectors’’ (Off. 1.35). Historians claim that ‘‘surrender into the trust’’ (deditio in fidem) of the conqueror was among the privileged means of entering into the clientele of a conqueror. However, there are controversies about the precise form of this arrangement.13 Conquest was the work of an individual who acted in the name of the People and Senate of Rome and who took certain actions toward an adversary whom he had defeated. The most conspicuous example is that of Sicily. After the Syracusans’ defeat in 212 they officially surrendered to their conqueror, M. Claudius Marcellus; but the affair is more complex, for it was at Rome, after Marcellus’ military victory over Syracuse, that a delegation from the city proposed to Marcellus that he become their patron.14 The clan of the Claudii had exercised a permanent patronage over Sicily that could still be seen in operation at the time of the prosecution of its governor Verres (70). The patrician Claudii Pulchri had intervened in Sicily during the First Punic War and the plebeian Claudii Marcelli later became the most reliable supporters of the Sicilians. Festivals were organized in honor of these ‘‘ancient patrons.’’ Statues representing M. Claudius Marcellus decorated public places of the cities. The Syracusans had decreed that the People should sacrifice to the gods every time Marcellus or a member of his family entered the city.
After administering a province an ex-governor could multiply benefits for his former province. Often he had the opportunity to create new groups of clients for his own profit. The island of Cyprus, included in the province of Cilicia which Cicero had governed, continued to receive his protection. A letter of Cicero’s in which he entrusts the island to his quaestor, C. Sextilius Rufus, tells us that Cicero also exercised his patronage over the city of Paphos (Fam. 13.48). However, Cyprus was also in the clientele of M. Porcius Cato, who had imposed provincial government there in 58 (Cic. Fam. 15.4.15). A Roman of status inferior to the governor could use his presence in the province to draw new patronal connections to himself. It was because he had been quaestor of Lilybeaum that Cicero was asked to take up the case of the Sicilian victims of Verres’ corruption. P. Clodius was also quaestor of Sicily when he asked Cicero whether was his custom to supply seats at the Roman games to his Sicilian clients.15
Foundation of colonies was a means of expanding the clientele of those who were in charge of the settlement, who then became the colonists’ patrons; so P. Cornelius Sulla, nephew of Sulla the dictator, was chosen as the patron of the colony of Pompeii founded by his uncle.16 Moreover, those who established the colony had at their disposal reserves of land that they could use to benefit their friends, whom they also had the right to enroll among the colonists. In this way Marius gave Roman citizenship to some Italians before the Social War, and Caesar did likewise for certain Greek aristocrats who were among his clients.17 Colonists also remained attached to the families of those who had allocated land to them. Caesar’s veterans, as beneficiaries of his colonial foundations, were easily mobilized by Octavian after Caesar’s death. A law from the end of the Republic attests to the hereditary character of this form of patronage in the colony of Urso in Spain.1
Patronage established by conquest gave way to other realities at the end of the Republic. Today, when historians describe the relationship between Romans and the cities or peoples of the empire during this period, they emphasize the voluntary forms, personal and collective, by which persons were entrusted to another’s protection. Civic communities appear to have been protected by patrons, whom they honor in inscriptions, but these were patrons whom they had solicited (‘‘patronage by request’’).19 Exiles also became patrons of the cities in which they resided. For example, the city of Dyrrachium across the Adriatic, which had received him well during his voyage into exile, remained in Cicero’s fides.20 During or after the exercise of an official function, Romans might become patrons of cities in nearby provinces. The point is underscored by recent epigraphic discoveries, especially in the Greek East. At the end ofthe second century and especially in the first, the names ofRoman protectors appeared in Greek inscriptions of the cities, who designated them by the term patron, a loan-word from the Latin. The procedure for voluntary entry into a clientele has been thoroughly analyzed thanks to an extraordinary document from Aphrodisias in Caria, a letter honoring Q. Oppius, patron of the city, who had been proconsul of Cilicia when Mithridates invaded the western part of Asia Minor (89 and early 88). The study of this document reveals many levels of decision making in seeking a patron, of which the first was a constitutional decision of the city in favor of choosing a protector, followed by solicitation of the future patron. An embassy was accordingly sent to him, bringing not only the official request from his future clients but arguments in its favor. The city hoped that by entering into Oppius’ patronage it would be rewarded for its previous actions and earn future benefits. The agreement of the patron was generally commemorated by the inscription of the official text on bronze tablets, ‘‘patronal tablets’’ ( tabulae patronatus) placed in a public area. The case of Q. Oppius is complex. In order to resist Mithridates, Q. Oppius had made an appeal to the allies of Rome and, despite Aphrodisias’ location outside the province, it sent him some troops. At the end of the war, Q. Oppius, while visiting the island of Cos, was approached by an embassy from Aphrodisias, which transmitted the request to become his client, citing its loyalty to Rome and its past services in favor of Q. Oppius. He accepted, and the text of his favorable response was engraved for posterity.21 Voluntary entry into clientship was thus one approach to patronage for individuals as well as communities.22 Patronage of a man chosen in this way operated over very large domains and its study offers insight into one of the essential mechanisms of Roman power.
World History
