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Conversely, the fact of being sui juris does not always imply freedom of action; this might be limited through consideration of age or sex. Minors and women may be free from potestas, but the former were subject to a temporary, the latter originally to a perpetual tutela.
§ 4. The Citizens and the Political Subdivisions of the State
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The whole collection of Roman citizens forms the populus Romanus quiritium,[118] or populus Romanus quirites.[119] Of the terms thus placed in apposition, populus Romanus is the more general descriptive name, and quirites the official title by which the citizens are addressed in the assembly. Yet both words appear to have the same signification; populus is the armed host,[120] and the quirites are the “bearers of the lance.”[121] If the latter etymology is correct, the word quirites came, by a course of development which finds many parallels in Roman history, to mean exactly the opposite of its original signification. At the end of the Republic it signifies the citizens in their purely civil capacity, wearing the toga, the garb of peace, and exercising political functions within the city; Caesar once quelled a mutiny of his legions by addressing them as quirites, showing by this address that they were disbanded and were no longer soldiers.[122]