patronage, non-literary
patronage, non-literaryGreek and Roman society were both heavily stratified, and many forms of dependence tied people to their superiors in wealth, power and status. The study of these relations is a central part of ancient social history. (Classical Athens was perhaps untypical.)
Sources such as the letters of Cicero and Pliny the Younger combine with the legal evidence and epigraphy to give a more complete picture of patronage in the Roman world. In addition, the special relationship between patron and client, patronus and cliens, among Roman citizens was recognized as being distinctive (e.g. Dionysius Halicarnassius Antiquitates Romanae 2. 9), and has received a great deal of scholarly attention.
By the Augustan period it could be believed that Romulus had assigned all the plebeians...
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