The position of the protected dependents was naturally so far changed that the freedmen and clients of every patron received on his account toleration in the community at large; they continued indeed to be immediately dependent on the protection of the family to which they belonged, but the very nature of the case implied that the clients of members of the community could not be wholly excluded from its worship and its festivals, although, of course, they were not capable of the proper rights or liable to the proper duties of burgesses.

This remark applies still more to the case of the protected dependents of the community at large.

The state thus consisted, like the household, of persons properly belonging to it and of dependents--of "burgesses" and of "inmates" or -- metoeci--.
The King As the clans resting upon a family basis were the constituent elements of the state, so the form of the body-politic was modelled after the family both generally and in detail.

The household was provided by nature herself with a head in the person of the father with whom it originated, and with whom it perished.

But in the community of the people, which was designed to be imperishable, there was no natural master; not at least in that of Rome, which was composed of free and equal husbandmen and could not boast of a nobility by the grace of God.