ROMAN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS PART I — MONARCHICAL - MONARCHICAL PERIOD SECTION I-HISTORICAL CHAPTER I ROME UNDER THE KINGS I. The Gens. The basis of political organization among the early Romans was the gens or clan. This unit of organization, which in one form or another is common to the Indo-European peoples, retained many of its characteristics and some measure of its social and political importance to a very late period. Cicero describes the gentiles of his day, or the members of a clan, as those who could trace their lineage back to a common ancestor, who could claim that their ancestors had all been freemen, and who were in possession of their full rights. The civil and political rights of the individual came to him as a member of a family belonging to a gens, and, since membership in a particular gens was indicated by the possession of the nomen gentilicium, or clan name, the legal and social importance which attached to the name is readily understood. In fact, in the earliest period, even the right to use the land, which was the property of the clan as a whole, was enjoyed by the individual only by virtue of his membership in one of those organizations. Attached to the various gentes, or to families belonging to the gentes, were hereditary dependents called clientes, who enjoyed some of the privileges of members of a clan, and in return therefor owed to their patronus such services as assisting in the payment of his ransom, if captured in time of war, and contributing to his daughter's dower. The control of clan affairs rested probably with the members of the clan, or with its representatives. Had the organization been under the headship of an individual, some traces of such a system would be discernible in historic times. 2. Pagi and their Confederation. The simplest purely political community was formed by the settlement of several clans about an arx or fortified point. These communities, called pagi, were, like the gentes, either purely democratic, or controlled by the elders. The union of "hill settlements" adjacent to one another for mutual protection in trade intercourse naturally followed. Perhaps several of these confederacies were formed in Latium, but of course the confederacy of greatest historic importance is the one having Alba Longa for its common point of meeting. The choice of that town as the place at which, even in historic times, the members of the confederacy met to offer a joint sacrifice to Jupiter Latiaris, shows plainly enough that Alba Longa was originally at the head of the league, but before the dawn of history Rome had succeeded her in the headship of at least this group of communities. 3. The Founding of Rome. According to the picturesque account which Roman writers have left us in prose and verse of the founding of their native city, Rome was |