Nobiles

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The nobiles (sg. nobilis) were members of a social rank in the Roman Republic indicating that one was "well known".[1] This may have changed over time: in Cicero's time, one was notable if one descended from a person who had been elected consul.[2] In earlier periods and more broadly, this may have included a larger group consisting of those who were patricians, were descended from patricians who had become plebeians via transitio ad plebem, or were descended from plebeians who had held curule offices.[3]

History

The nobiles emerged after the

Latin: imagines) and actors in aristocratic funeral processions.[4] However, the term is largely unattested to in the middle Republic, having been introduced in the late Republic as a description rather than a status.[5] Earning such a mask required holding one of the qualifying curule magistracies.[6]

These elections meant the republican nobility was not entirely closed.[7] Nor in the republic did nobiles enjoy special legal privileges. In the later Republic, one who became noble was termed a novus homo (English: new man), an unusual achievement.[8] Two of the most famous examples of these self-made "new men" were Gaius Marius, who held the consulship seven times, and Cicero. While wholly new men were rare, the political elite as a whole turned over as some families were unable to win elections over multiple generations and other families became more prominent, creating slow-moving and osmotic change.[9]

The prestige of the nobiles was connected directly to their election to high office by the people.[10] During the Roman Republic, the nobiles never held less than about 70 per cent of the consulships over longer periods; by the time of Cicero, the nobiles as a whole held more than 90 per cent of the consulships, a proportion "remarkably untouched by the most violent political crises".[4] The narrowing of what made someone part of the nobiles occurred around the time of the constitutional reforms of Sulla with its "much larger senate with a proportionately smaller circle of elite senators... many new Italians in the Sullan senate, and the increased number of praetors" leading the elite to close ranks to preserve their prestige.[11]

During the time of

Acilii Glabriones who survived into the 4th century.[4]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Brunt 1982, p. 11.
  2. ^ Brunt 1982, p. 1.
  3. curule aedile
    .
  4. ^ a b c Badian 2012a.
  5. .
  6. ^ Flower 2010, pp. 155–56. "It was the mask and the chair that traditionally identified a man, and his family, as part of the political elite".
  7. ^ Burckhardt 1990, p. 84.
  8. ^ Badian 2012b.
  9. ^ Burckhardt 1990, p. 86.
  10. ^ Flower 2010, p. 46.
  11. ^ Flower 2010, p. 156–57.
  12. .

Sources

Further reading