As a rule it was during the first two
hours (_mane_) that callers collected. In the old times it had been
the custom to open your house and begin your business at daybreak, and
after saluting your familia and asking a blessing of the household
gods, to attend to your own affairs and those of your clients.[419]
Although we are not told so explicitly, we must suppose that the same
practice held good in Cicero's time; under the Empire it is familiar
to all readers of Seneca or Martial, but in a form which was open to
much criticism and satire. The client of the Empire was a degraded
being; of the client in the last age of the Republic we only know that
he existed, and could be useful to his _patronus_ in many ways,--in
elections and trials especially;[420] but we do not hear of his
pressing himself on the attention of his patron every morning, or
receiving any "sportula." All the same, the number of persons, whether
clients in this sense or in the legal sense, or messengers, men of
business, and ordinary callers, who would want to see a man like
Cicero before he left his house in the morning, would beyond doubt be
considerable.
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