Several reasons may be offered for beginning this study of patronage with an examination of the related vocabulary. Most simply, in order to understand the testimony of the ancient sources, it is necessary to know the meaning of the words used to describe the phenomena under study. But this, of course, hardly constitutes a sufficient reason, since the lexical definitions of the important words, such as patronus, cliens and beneficium, are satisfactory. What is of real concern here is to discover in what social contexts and with what connotations the words were used. As these questions are answered, we shall begin to understand the way in which Roman aristocrats categorized their social relationships and the attitudes and ethics appropriate to each category.

While a language study can be useful as an avenue of entry into the Roman Weltanschauung, it has potential pitfalls. Just as problems are encountered if no distinction is drawn between ideals and behavior, so will mistakes be made if we fail to distinguish between conscious statements about the usage of patronage-related words given by Roman authors and actual usage in the extant literature. Moreover, there may be a temptation to assume a simple one-to-one relationship between words and categories. For example, in a recent study it was thought significant that both Roman poets and their aristocratic supporters were called amici, adhering to the ‘familiar code of amicitia’. But, as will become clear in this chapter, the fact that men of varying social statuses could be called amici does not indicate that all amicitiae fit into a single category of social relationships with a single code of conduct.