One of the major spheres of activity within patron-client relations was the law courts, but clientela was not itself a legal contract, though it was supported by law from earliest Roman times.[11] The pressures to uphold one's obligations were primarily moral, founded on ancestral custom, and on qualities of good faith on the part of the patron and loyalty on the part of the client.[12] The patronage relationship was not a discrete one, but a network, since a patronus might himself be obligated to someone of higher status or greater power, and a cliens might have more than one patron, whose interests could come into conflict.