SALUTATIO
SALUTATIO the name given to one of the forms of attention
(
officia) expected from clients by their
patrons at Rome. The client would wait even before daybreak (cf. Mayor on
Juv. 3.127 and 5.19) in the vestibule until
the doors of the atrium were opened. There he attended until the patron
appeared, and the nomenclator announced the name of the dependent, who
brought his morning greeting (
ave). The callers
were commonly divided into various
admissiones,
according to their rank and intimacy, and even men of good position found
themselves in the number (
Juv. 1.100; Sen.
de Ben. 6.33). The clients who were invited to do so,
accompanied the patron wherever he might be going. Others, after receiving
the dole [
SPORTULA] at one
house, would hurry off to another, to be similarly rewarded there (
Mart. 10.74). The name
salutatores was used of the clients who earned their living
by these attentions. (Cf. Friedländer,
Röm.
Sitteng. i.6 382 ff.; Becker,
Gallus, ii.3 159 if.)
[
A.S.W]
