seems to be implied in the XII. Tables, and may have been granted them at an earlier date. At any rate after 449 B.C. there were no disabilities in private law involved in their status. The relation of patron and client, it is true, still remained; the patron could still exact from his client respect, obedience and service, and he and his gens had still an eventual right of succession to a deceased client’s estate. But the fiduciary duties of the patron were greatly relaxed, and practically little more was expected of him than that he should continue to give his client his advice, and prevent him falling into a condition of indigence; sacer esto ceased to be the penalty of protection denied or withheld, its application being limited to fraus facta, which in the language of the Tables meant positive injury inflicted or damage done.
So matters remained during the 4th, 3rd and 2nd centuries. In the 2nd and 1st a variety of events contributed still further to modify the relationship. The rapacity of patrons was checked by the lex Cincia (passed by M. Cincius Alimentus, tribune in 204 B.C.), which prohibited their taking gifts of money from their clients; marriages between patron and client gradually ceased to be regarded as unlawful, or as ineffectual to secure to the issue the status of the patron father. At the same time the remaining political disabilities of the clients were removed by their enrolment in all the tribes instead of only the four city tribes, and their admission to the magistracy and the senate. Hereditary clientage ceased when a client attained to a curule dignity; and in the case of the descendants of freedmen enfranchised in solemn forms it came to be limited to the first generation. Gradually but steadily one feature after another of the old institution disappeared, till by the end of the 1st century it had resolved itself into the limited relationship between patron and freedman on the one hand, and the unlimited honorary relationship between the patron who gave gratuitous advice on questions of law and those who came to consult him on the other. To have a large following of clients of this class was a matter of ambition to every man of mark in the end of the republic; it increased his importance, and ensured him a band of zealous agents in his political schemes. But amid the rivalries of parties and with the venality of the lower orders, baser methods had to be resorted to in order to maintain a patron’s influence; the favour and support of his clients had to be purchased with something more substantial than mere advice. And so arose that wretched and degrading clientage of the early empire, of which Martial, who was not ashamed to confess himself a first-rate specimen of the breed, has given us such graphic descriptions; gatherings of idlers, sycophants and spendthrifts, at the levees and public appearances of those whom, in their fawning servility, they addressed as lords and masters, but whom they abused behind their backs as close-fisted upstarts—and all for the sake of the sportula, the daily dole of a dinner, or of a few pence wherewith to procure one. With the middle empire this disappeared; and when a reference to patron and client occurs in later times it is in the sense of counsel and client, the words patron and advocate being used almost synonymously. It was not so in the days of the great forensic orators. The word advocate, it is said, occurs only once in the singular in the pages of Cicero. But at a later period, when the bar had become a profession, and the qualifications, admission, numbers and fees of counsel had become a matter of state regulation, advocati was the word usually employed to designate the pleaders as a class of professional men, each individual advocate, however, being still spoken of as patron in reference to the litigant with whose interest he was entrusted. It is in this limited connexion that patron and client come under our notice in the latest monuments of Roman law.
Literature.—On the clientage of early Rome see T. Mommsen, “Die römische Clientel,” Röm. Forschungen, i. 355 (Berlin, 1864); M. Voigt, “Ueber die Clientel und Libertinität,” in Ber. d. phil. histor. Classe d. königl. sächs. Gesellsch. d. Wissenschaften (1878, pp. 147–219); J. Marquardt, Privatleben d. Römer, pp. 196–200 (Leipzig, 1879); M. Voigt, Die XII. Tafeln., ii. 667–679 (Leipzig, 1883). Earlier literature is noted in P. Willems, Le Droit public romain, 4th ed., p. 26 (Louvain, 1880). On the clientage of the early empire see W. A. Becker, Gallus, vol. ii., Excursus 4 (London, 1849); L. Friedländer, Sittengeschichte Roms, i. 200–212 (Leipzig, 1901); Marquardt, op. cit. pp. 200–208. On the latest clientage, see T. Grellet-Dumazeau, Le Barreau romain (Paris, 1858). (J. M.*; A. M. Cl.)
PATTEN (adapted from Fr. patin, in modern usage meaning
a “skate”; Med. Lat. patinus, Ital. pattino, of unknown origin;
cf. patte, paw), a kind of shoe which, varying in form at different
times and places, raised the wearer from the ground in order
to keep the feet out of mud or wet. Pattens were necessaries
to women of all classes in the uncleaned and unpaved streets of
the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. They may still be found in
use in rural parts of England. A wooden shoe or clog, a light
strapped shoe with a very thick sole of wood or cork, and, more
particularly, an iron ring supporting at a little distance from the
ground a wooden sole with a strap through which the foot slips,
have all been types which the patten has taken. An extraordinary
kind of “patten” was fashionable in Italy and Spain in
the 16th or 17th centuries. This was the chopine,[1] a loose slipper
resting on a very thick sole of cork or wood. During the 17th
century at Venice ladies wore “chopines” of exaggerated size.
Coryat, in his Crudities, 1611 (vol. i. p. 400, ed. 1905), gives a
description of these Venetian “chapineys.” They were of
wood covered with red, white and yellow leather, some gilt or
painted, and reached a height sometimes of half a yard. Ladies
wearing these exaggerated chopines had to be accompanied by
attendants to prevent them falling. There is a 16th century
Venetian “chopine” in the British Museum. The “Patten-makers”
Company is one of the minor Livery companies of
London. The patten-makers were originally joined with the
“Pouch and Galoche Makers,” and are mentioned as early as
1400. They became a separate fraternity in 1469, but did not
obtain a charter till 1670.
PATTER, properly a slang word for the secret or “cant”
language used by beggars, thieves, gipsies, &c., hence the fluent
plausible talk that a cheap-jack employs to pass off his goods,
or a conjuror to cover up his tricks. It is thus used of any rapid
manner of talking, and of a “patter-song,” in which a very large
number of words have to be sung at high speed to fit them to the
music. The word, though in some of its senses affected by
“patter,” to make a series of rapid strokes or pats, as of raindrops,
is derived from the quick, mechanical repetition of the
Paternoster, or Lord’s Prayer.
PATTERN, a model, that which serves as an original from which similar objects may be made, or as an example or specimen; in particular an artistic design serving as a sample or model, hence the arrangement or grouping of lines, figures, &c., which make up such a design. The word was taken from Fr. patron, Lat. patronus, a defender or protector. In medieval Latin patronus had the specific meaning of example, and in modern French both meanings of patron and pattern attach to patron. “Patron” in the sense of copy, example, began to be pronounced and spelled in England as “pattern” in the 16th century.
PATTESON, JOHN COLERIDGE (1827–1871), English missionary, bishop of Melanesia, was born in London on the 1st of April 1827, the eldest son of Sir John Patteson, justice of the King’s Bench, and Frances Duke Coleridge, a near relative of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was educated at Ottery St Mary and at Eton, where he distinguished himself on the cricket-field. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1845, graduated B.A. in 1848, and in 1852 became a fellow of Merton College. In 1853 he became curate of Alfington, Devon, and in the following year he was ordained priest. He then joined George Augustus Selwyn, bishop of New Zealand, in a mission to the Melanesian islands. There he laboured with great success, visiting the different islands of the group in the mission ship the “Southern Cross,” and by his good sense and devotion winning the esteem and affection of the natives. His linguistic powers were
- ↑ The word is taken from an obsolete French chapine or Spanish chapin, and is of doubtful origin. The Spanish chapa, flat plate, has been suggested. The word does not occur in Italian, though it is often Italianized in English in such forms as cioppino.
