Plebeians and Patricians

[georgious]

...For the Romans, the patrician/plebeian distinction was a hereditary marker, not an economic marker...

Of course I'm sure you'll agree that it beganas an economic/political marker and, as family fortunes tend to change over time, became a hereditary marker for the more powerful segments of society.

It's possible, but I don't think it's likely. The patricians go back to the founding of the city, when Rome was just a village of huts. Given iron age culture, differences in family wealth and status are caused by family size (hence the fertility gods). My guess is that the patricians were simply the first big families in Rome--fertile and large in number, therefore wealthy and high status (for a bunch of people living in huts, that is). Since Rome welcomed immigrants, it was natural that there would be an us/them distinction. Just look at small towns in Appalachia that are the same way, with large long-established (but never particularly wealthy) families taking ferocious pride in their "roots" and seeking to maintain political and religious influence in their communities.

 

EDIT: A better analogy might be Americans who take such enormous pride in tracing their families back to the Mayflower. These American patricians didn't begin as richer than the later immigrants, they were just first and long-established. In fact, those Massachusetts puritans were originally so far from rich that they were stealing and begging food from the natives.

 

I think there's a great deal of truth to all this. You can find it today in small towns in my home town--or anywhere else I imagine--where older families are more well known and respected.

 

Take a look at p 162 on Forsythe for an interesting take on the issue (I've inserted the paragraph for those who don't have access):

 

Since WWII, one important trend in the study of this problem has been to take seriously the possibility that the late annalistic tradition was wrong about a patrician monopoly of the consulship from its inception to 366 BC and to regard the non-patrician names in the consular list as both reliable and genuinely non-patrician. this hypothesis has often been combined with an idea proposed by the Italian scholar De Sanctis that, like so many other things, the patriciate was the product of historical evolution, and the group of families which composed it did not become a closed, exclusive body until some time during th early republic. E.J. Bickermann reinforced the plausibility of this idea by pointing out its similarity t much better documented cases of self-defined closed ruling oligarchies in the free communes of late medieval Italy...De Sanctis's concept of the closing of the patriciate has been widely accepted and has been applied by various scholars to the surviving data in attempting to determine exactly when the patriciate came into being. Indeed, an evolutionary approach to the question of the patriciate's origin receives support from both the ancient literary tradition and archaeology.

 

I would like to stress that there has been a later fusion between patricians and rich plebeians which created a new class of people under the label nobilitas.

Edited May 8, 2007 by georgious

[Hanno]

How could L. Junius Brutus do what he did without being a Patrician?

[M. Porcius Cato]

How could L. Junius Brutus do what he did without being a Patrician?

 

What does being a patrician have to do with it?

[Hanno]

How could L. Junius Brutus do what he did without being a Patrician?

 

What does being a patrician have to do with it?

 

Well, I understand that all political and religious posts in the early republic were limited only to patricians, and most wealth was probably held by them as well. I also think it's safe to assume that the late monarchy wasn't much different in this regard(except being a monarchy and all that ). Under these circumstances, I find it hard to see how a non-patrician could get enough political and popular support to overthrow the existing system, create a new one, and place himself at the top.

Edited May 10, 2007 by Hanno

[M. Porcius Cato]

Under these circumstances, I find it hard to see how a non-patrician could get enough political and popular support to overthrow the existing system, create a new one, and place himself at the top.

If one abandons the assumption that this was a popular revolution, the mystery evaporates. There are hints in the sources that the expulsion of the Tarquins was assisted by foreign powers, who would presumably not subscribe to parochial prejudices against plebeians.

 

On a side note, it is absolutely imperative that one quit thinking of plebeians as poor and patricians as rich. This way of thinking about the distinction is not the way the Romans conceived of the difference, and it obscures the issues that were at stake. The plebeian/patrician distinction was a hereditary distinction (like Smiths versus Joneses), not an economic distinction.

[Gaius Paulinus Maximus]

In an earlier post, Virgil61 mentioned that only 5-10% of the population were Patrician, am I right in saying that this percentage never really got any better? Due to the fact that the majority of the patrician clans were strongly against "inter breeding" between Patrician and Plebeian families, they preferred to keep the bloodline "pure" and because the Patricians were in a small minority this was in some ways a form of class suicide (is that the correct term?)

Any thoughts?

[Hanno]

If one abandons the assumption that this was a popular revolution, the mystery evaporates. There are hints in the sources that the expulsion of the Tarquins was assisted by foreign powers, who would presumably not subscribe to parochial prejudices against plebeians.

 

In this case, why the consulate quickly became patrician only?

 

On a side note, it is absolutely imperative that one quit thinking of plebeians as poor and patricians as rich. This way of thinking about the distinction is not the way the Romans conceived of the difference, and it obscures the issues that were at stake. The plebeian/patrician distinction was a hereditary distinction (like Smiths versus Joneses), not an economic distinction.

 

I understand that in the early republic this generalization does apply, more or less.

[M. Porcius Cato]

In this case, why the consulate quickly became patrician only?

Presumably because patricians were more numerous among the regal magistrates and thereby held a collective hegemony on legal and political expertise.

 

On a side note, it is absolutely imperative that one quit thinking of plebeians as poor and patricians as rich.

I understand that in the early republic this generalization does apply, more or less.

Evidence? If the plebs were 'the poor' in the early republic, are we to assume that the entire manpower of the military was drawn from patrician families alone? It's hard to credit.

[The Augusta]

I would agree entirely with Cato that a rich/poor distinction between Patricians and Plebeians is a fallacy. However, I don't think this confusion is helped by the generic term 'plebs' used by a variety of less academic sources to describe the Roman populace as a whole - or even - dare we say it - the 'mob'.

[theilian]

My incomplete impression is that by late Republic patrician-plebeian dichotomy was largely supplanted by newer nobiles-ignobiles dichotomy.

I understand that religious offices were limited to patricians, but otherwise I don't think relatively newer nobiles like Cato or Antonius suffered much handicap in their career due to their plebeian origin. On the other hand, it seems to me nobiles wanted to keep the noble blood pure, thus consulship being zealously guarded against new men.

 

But IMHO by the time of Cicero, I think (I have no evidence but just impression) there was a great deal of social upheaval and it seems to me that there were more possibilities for new men. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[M. Porcius Cato]

My incomplete impression is that by late Republic patrician-plebeian dichotomy was largely supplanted by newer nobiles-ignobiles dichotomy.

But what is a "nobile"? If a nobile is a magistrate, then--by definition--nobiles held a monopoly on magistracies. But this is totally uninformative. It's exactly synonymous with saying that magistrates held a monopoly on magistracies! If a nobile is a person hailing from a family that held the consulship, the category is open to new families, which wasn't true of the patrician class (Agrippa notwithstanding).

 

I understand that religious offices were limited to patricians

Only a handful of religious offices (e.g., the worthless flamenate) were limited to patricians in the late republic. Cicero, for example, was an augur.

 

On the other hand, it seems to me nobiles wanted to keep the noble blood pure, thus consulship being zealously guarded against new men.

But there were no blood lines to a class that could include Marius, Cato, Caesar, Sulla, Pompey, and Cicero. Indeed, of these six, only two (Sulla and Caesar) were descended from ancient Roman lines.

 

But IMHO by the time of Cicero, I think (I have no evidence but just impression) there was a great deal of social upheaval and it seems to me that there were more possibilities for new men. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

It's not quite that simple. Although we talk about it as though it were a class to itself, being a "new man" really was a matter of degree. Between men whose families had never held any senatorial rank whatever (the prototypic new man) and men whose families had contributed consuls (the prototypic nobile), there were men hailing from families whose members had never risen above quaestor, aedile, tribune, and praetor. Between 78-49 BCE, 7 non-nobiles held the consulship (11.5%), 91 non-nobiles held the praetorship (51% of known praetors), 27 non-nobiles held the aedileship (56.25% of known aediles), 80 non-nobiles held the tribuneship (71% of known tribunes), and 154 non-nobiles were ordinary senators (77% of known pedarii). Thus, after Sulla, the majority of magistracies were held by non-nobiles. Before Sulla, I don't think we have enough names to do a similar statistical analysis, but I'd be happy to be corrected.

[Northern Neil]

Sorry to shoot of onto a bit of a tangent, but who or what were the equestrian classes? Would it be equally as fallacious to regard them as a middle class, between the plebs and patricians?

[georgious]

Sorry to shoot of onto a bit of a tangent, but who or what were the equestrian classes? Would it be equally as fallacious to regard them as a middle class, between the plebs and patricians?

I have seen in the past a book named "The Roman middle-class" whose author's name escapes me.But it is devoted to the euestrian class.The point is who were the beneficiaries of the whole Roman system:obviously the Senators and the Equites were happy with the Republic and even more with the Empire.I would say that the knights were more of an empire phoenomenon.The division of free Roman in patricians and plebeians was a more archaic distinction that lost currency with imperial even republican expansion. Also note the fusion of patricians and rich plebeians that created the new class of Roman nobilitas. The other point is that we use anylitycal categories that were created after the French Revolution such as class to analyze realities much more ancient.

[Pompieus]

The quality of "nobility", according to M. Gelzer (and I think still mainly accepted today) belonged to descendants of all those who at some time had held the highest public office viz. dictatorship, consulship or consular tribunate.

 

The definition of "equestrian" is variable. It originally meant those citizens registered in the 18 "equestrian centuries" who performed their military service on horseback. Later it meant those Romans of wealth who chose not to pursue public office and entrance to the senate (a "middle class"?).

 

The "patricians" were definitally a hereditary, rather than an economic class. Consider the economic straights to which Sulla (a patrician Cornelius) was reduced in his youth, and the desperate measures Catilina (a patrician Sergius) was willing to take to restore his families' status. Most of the patrician families had died out or, at least were in no position economically to compete for the consulship during the late republic, and Augustus attempted to remedy this by creating new patrician families.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Most of the patrician families had died out or, at least were in no position economically to compete for the consulship during the late republic, and Augustus attempted to remedy this by creating new patrician families.

 

Most of the patrician families had died out? What's the basis of such a claim? And how many new patrician families did Augustus create anyway? Wasn't this mostly a reward for his cronies?