Badian Ernst. Foreign Clientelae, 264-70 B.C

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. — 342 p.The relationship of patron and client was a typically Roman institution: a relationship between the weaker and the stronger based on moral obligation and sanctioned by custom and force. This book attempts to show how it became the pattern of Rome's relations with foreign states, how it developed into the chief instrument of Roman domination, and how this relationship formed a critical part of the fabric that held the Empire together.