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Civis, a word of uncertain origin, signifies less definitely than quirites the possession of active political rights. Hence its application to women and to the partially-privileged members of the state—to those who were, at certain periods of Roman history, given rights in private law, while debarred from the exercise of the suffrage or the attainment of office. It is possible that the distinction between the full citizen (civis optimo jure) and the partial citizen (civis non optimo jure), although probably not a primitive,[124] may yet be an ancient conception of Roman law. Those Plebeians who had never been, or who had ceased to be, entirely dependent on a patronus for the exercise of their legal rights, would practically have belonged to this latter class. Before the reform of Servius, which gave them political privileges, they might have been called cives; it is only after this reform that they could have been called quirites. It was, perhaps, in consequence of this change in the constitution that cives replaced quirites as the designation of the full citizens with reference to all their rights.