Brutus: Patrician or Plebian?

[ASCLEPIADES]

[quote name='Julia C

Edited July 28, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[Julia C]

How could he possibly be a plebeian, though? The consulship (or praetorship at that date, I suppose) was not granted to plebeians until the third century, was it not?

[ASCLEPIADES]

[quote name='Julia C

[Ingsoc]

[quote name='Julia C

[ASCLEPIADES]

Just keep in mind we don't know when the Plebian-Patrician division was made and some historians think, base of the name of the Consuls in the fasti, that in the early years of the republic the Plebians weren't excluded from the Consulship. another evidence to support this theory is the fact that the rule against marriage between Plebs and Patricians was originate in the XII Tables, long after the founding of the republic.

You have a quite interesting point, even if it runs against the traditinoal interpretation quoted by JC and clearly prevalent here at UNRV. I would agree, for the Occam's razor; otherwise, you require to admit the existence of multiple homonym patrician families abruptly ended before the annalist period without leaving any trace in the Fasti or everywhere else; that's in fact the way W. Smith regularly solved such anomaly.

[Julia C]

Ingsoc: I'm not sure I follow that line with the twelve tables--wouldn't the existence of a law forbidding intermarriage tend to strengthen the point that there was a legal distinction between the two in the early republic?

 

And isn't the very notion of what it means to be patrician tied up with the earliest composition of the Senate? That is, if a name appears on the consular fasti in such dates, that it must by necessity be patrician even if it had lost that status later on? The patricians were the original patres, were they not? And therefore, they were the original senators. It seems counterintuitive to think otherwise, unless the whole etymology behind the word patricians is going to be overturned.

[Ingsoc]

[quote name='Julia C

[ASCLEPIADES]

The decemviri who wrote the XII Tables enter office in 451 BC, the idea of those historians which I noted in my previous post is that in first years of the republic (which was founded in 509 BC) the consulship was open for Plebeians and only in later times did the distinction between Patrician-Plebs became rigid. to support their theory they cite that only in the XII Tables the law against intermarriage between the orders was enacted.

 

Obviously this theory is not without it's problems and most historians tend to accept the traditional description.

The presence in the oldest consular Fasti of some family names like Iunius, Cassius and Minucius might strongly support such theory, as all such nomina were only attested in purely plebeian Gentes in all available ancient Roman sources.

 

No doubt the Patrician order was closely related to the members of the senate, however you need to remember we know nothing about how it's was created. It's possible like you wrote that partition between the orders date back to the original senate in the kingdom on the other hand it's just as much likely that this partition was based in the founding of the republic as the senators try to ensure themselves monopoly over the state and thus for example if a person was of a senatorial family from the founding of the senate and was kick out from the senate by the king he would be of Plebeian order rather than Patrician.

Just for the record, all Roman families which traced their ascendece from the Latin/Sabine Roman kings (ie, the first four) which I'm aware of were unimpeachably plebeians, with the possible exception of some members of the Romilia gens(?); maybe even also at least some members of the Tarquinia gens.

[Ingsoc]

As I said there some flaws in this methodology, and even ancient writers notice it. for example:

 

"For it was customary in most families of note to preserve their images, their trophies of honour, and their memoirs, either to adorn a funeral when any of the family deceased, or to perpetuate the fame of their ancestors, or prove their own nobility. But the truth of History has been much corrupted by these laudatory essays; for many circumstances were recorded in them which never existed; such as false triumphs, a pretended succession of consulships, and false alliances and elevations, when men of inferior rank were confounded with a noble family of the same name: as if I myself should pretend that I am descended from M. Tullius, who was a Patrician,

and shared the consulship with Servius Sulpicius, about ten years after the expulsion of the kings." (Cicero, Brutus, 16.62)

 

Some modern historian (like Ronald Syme) seem to agree and claim that either the Nobilitas enter names to early consulate fasti of ancestors who never exist or falsely claim to have descended from families which by then were extinct.

[Julia C]

Then I would wonder how reliable those old fasti are, especially with the sack in 390 and the like. The notion of later nobiles adding their names to the historical record would seem to make the most sense to me, as it's something that they would happily do. That Cicero bit there seems to suggest that sort of thing could/would have happened.

[ASCLEPIADES]

[quote name='Julia C

[P.Clodius]

Regarding the original question, the Brutus familiy from the Iunia gens was regarded as plebeian since the oldest times...

This I have a hard time swallowing. Brutus (LJ) was one of the first consuls. How could he become a consul if he was not a patrician prior to the eventual outcome of the conflict of the orders?

[Nephele]

Regarding the original question, the Brutus familiy from the Iunia gens was regarded as plebeian since the oldest times...

This I have a hard time swallowing. Brutus (LJ) was one of the first consuls. How could he become a consul if he was not a patrician prior to the eventual outcome of the conflict of the orders?

 

Lucius Junius Brutus, consul of 509 BCE who (according to tradition) led in the expulsion of the Tarquin kings, was a patrician.

 

T.R.S. Broughton states: "The other Iunii prominent in the Roman Republic appeared late in the record and were all plebeian, even though they claimed descent from the Liberator [L. Junius Brutus]."

 

Tradition also holds that L. Junius Brutus had slain his own sons, and thereby ended his direct family line.

 

-- Nephele

[Maty]

Brutus the Liberator was definitely a Patrician (if he existed at all) in that he was a relative of King Tarquin. However, as Nephele says, he not only killed his own sons, (for treason) but died himself within weeks. However, I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere in the context of the Aemilian family that by Roman convention, a distant member of a clan was able to adopt a noble name if the alternative was that the name would die altogether. Therefore, anyone wanting to put their necks right out could postulate that with the death of the patrician Brutus, a plebian relative - perhaps a cadet line - might have picked up the name but not the status.

[ASCLEPIADES]

Brutus the Liberator was definitely a Patrician (if he existed at all)

As far as I'm aware, it's Marcus J Brutus and his fellow tyrannicides who were regularly called the Liberators (Liberatores), not Lucius J. Brutus the Republic's founder.

I agree, we're talking about mythology here. LJ Brutus story itself has plenty of contradictions and chronological impossibilities. It's like discussing if Venus was the daughter of Jupiter (Homer) or Ouranos (Hesiod). Romans' perceptions are then as important as facts.

 

...in that he was a relative of King Tarquin.

He was indeed, but by his mother (Tarquin's sister).

 

However, I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere in the context of the Aemilian family that by Roman convention, a distant member of a clan was able to adopt a noble name if the alternative was that the name would die altogether. Therefore, anyone wanting to put their necks right out could postulate that with the death of the patrician Brutus, a plebian relative - perhaps a cadet line - might have picked up the name but not the status.

Here comes Mestrius Plutarchus, Vita Brutus, cp. I, sec. I, VI & VII:

"Marcus Brutus was a descendant of that Junius Brutus whose bronze statue, with a drawn sword in its hand, was erected by the ancient ...

...but as to the lineage of Brutus by his father's side, those who display great hatred and malevolence towards him because of the murder of Caesar deny that it goes back to that Brutus who expelled the Tarquins, since no offspring was left to him when he had slain his sons. The ancestor of Brutus, they say, was a plebeian, son of a steward by the name of Brutus, and had only recently risen to office.

Poseidonius the philosopher, however, says that the two sons of Brutus who were of age perished according to the story, but that a third son was left, an infant, from whom the family descended. 8 He says, moreover, that there were certainly industrious men of this house in his own day, some of whom called attention to their likeness in form and features to the statue of Brutus".

 

Anyway, it's clear the Junia gens was among the oldest Roman plebeian families, because one of the first Tribunes of the Plebs was indeed a Lucius Junius Brutus in CCLX AUC / 494 BC, just 15 years after the beginning of the Republican period (contemporary homonyms or the same person?).

 

MT Cicero also perceived the plebeian Junia gens as descendents from the first consul (Philippica I, cp. XIII)

Fuerit ille Brutus, qui et ipse dominatu regio rem publicam liberavit et ad similem virtutem et simile factum stirpem

"Even had he been that great Lucius Brutus who himself also delivered the republic from kingly power, and who has produced posterity nearly five hundred years after himself of similar virtue, and equal to similar achievements"

 

The Junia gens was not an isolated case.

There are many traditionally Plebeian names that appeared in the consular Fasti previous to the Lex Licinia Sextia (CCCLXXXVII AUC / 367 BC) that would require for their explanation the too convenient existence of many tiny Patrician gentes which became quickly extinct only for being almost immediately replaced by homonym (and long-lasting) plebeian gentes.

The Cassia gens is another good example.

 

I'm not sure if all that nice explanation would survive the Occam's razor.

The obvious alternative explanation would be that there were at least some plebeian Consuls previous to the Lex Licinia Sextia, hardly surprising as there were indeed some plebeian (or more ephemeral Patrician gentes???) Decemvirs and Consular Tribunes.

Edited August 19, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES