ABSTRACT
As the city-state of Rome expands, the old political and social institution of clientela becomes charged with new and sinister significances.^* The concept, devised by Rome's
2 first lawgiver and king, assumes the central position m the relation between the growing city and its non-Italic associ ates. More than that: individual Romans competing for influ ence and power discover the multifarious uses of clientela during the series of crises that culminates at Actium. And even under the new dispensation of the Julio-Claudian principate, in which all the levers of power are concentrated in the hands of one great patronus, the awareness of the effectiveness of clientela does not fade at once among the decimated nobility but subsists, and incites the consular Cornelius Tacitus to comment and to explanation.^
1E. Badian, Foreign Clientelae (Oxford 1956). The indebtedness of the author toward this fundamental work will be immediately apparent.
