The original classical Roman definition of "familia" referred to “a body of enslaved people,” and did not refer to wives and children. The classical legal concept of "pater familias" as “head of household” derived from this early conception of "familia" and, thus, from the legal relationship between slaveowners and their enslaved laborers rather than that between fathers and children. Since the early classical period, Roman writers and jurists have interpreted ancient writers’ invocation of "pater familias" as the basis of the concept of “head of household”—over the alternative Latin word for slaveowner, "dominus"—as a purposeful choice, intended to mitigate the harsh connotations that the act of slaveholding conferred onto heads of households and expanding the applicability of the term to non-enslaved members of the household. As a semantic term, "pater familias" thus connoted heads of household who were thought to combine the affective tenderness of a father with the stern coercion of a slaveowner in ordering their households.