C.[119] Patricians and plebeians
then coalesced and henceforth formed but one people.
THE ROMAN PEOPLE
=The Right of Citizenship.=--The _people_ in Rome, as in Greece, is
not the whole of the inhabitants, but the body of citizens. Not every
man who lives in the territory is a citizen, but only he who has the
right of citizenship. The citizen has numerous privileges:
1. He alone is a member of the body politic; he alone has the
right of voting in the assemblies of the Roman people, of serving
in the army, of being present at the religious ceremonials at
Rome, of being elected a Roman magistrate. These are what were
called public rights.
2. The citizen alone is protected by the Roman law; he only has
the right of marrying legally, of becoming the father of a family,
that is to say, of being master of his wife and his children, of
making his will, of buying or selling. These were the private
rights.
Those who were not citizens were not only excluded from the army and
the assembly, but they could not marry, could not possess the absolute
power of the father, could not hold property legally, could not invoke
the Roman law, nor demand justice at a Roman tribunal.
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