In course of time, as the rights and privileges of the plebeians increased after the appointment of tribunes, their position, from having originally been much inferior, became superior to that of the clients, and the latter preferred to throw off the tie uniting them to their patrons and become merged in the plebeians.

In this manner the intermediate class of clients at length entirely disappeared.

[191] These clients must not be confused with the subsequent class of the same name, who are found during the later period of the republic and the empire, and were the voluntary supporters or hangers-on of rich men.

It would appear that these early clients corresponded very closely to the household servants of the Indian cultivators, from whom the village menial castes were developed.

The Roman client was sometimes a freed slave, but this would not have made him a member of the family, even in a subordinate position.