Nobiles

The nobiles ({{singular}} nobilis, {{Translation|'noble', 'noteworthy'}}) were members of a social rank in the Roman Republic indicating that one was "well known".{{sfn|Brunt|1982|p=11}} This may have changed over time: in Cicero's time, one was notable if one descended from a person who had been elected consul.{{sfn|Brunt|1982|p=1}} 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.{{harvnb|Brunt|1982|p=1|ps=. The curule offices were those of dictator, magister equitum, censor, consul, praetor, and curule aedile}}.

History

The nobiles emerged after the Conflict of the Orders established legal equality between patricians and plebeians, allowing plebeians to hold all the magistracies; the state of being "known" was connected to the nobiles{{'}}s rights to funeral masks ({{langx|la|imagines}}) and actors in aristocratic funeral processions.{{sfn|Badian|2012a}} 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.{{Cite book |last=Millar |first=Fergus |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SIJYTTARlJ8C&dq=%22Thirdly%2C+the+much-used+term+%22the+patrician-plebeian+nobility%22%22&pg=PA126 |title=Rome, the Greek World, and the East |date=2002 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-8078-4990-3 |pages=126–27 |language=en}} Earning such a mask required holding one of the qualifying curule magistracies.{{harvnb|Flower|2010|pp=155–56|ps=. "It was the mask and the chair that traditionally identified a man, and his family, as part of the political elite".}}

These elections meant the republican nobility was not entirely closed.{{sfn|Burckhardt|1990|p=84}} Nor in the republic did nobiles enjoy special legal privileges. In the later Republic, one who became noble was termed a novus homo ({{langx|en|new man}}), an unusual achievement.{{sfn|Badian|2012b}} 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.{{sfn|Burckhardt|1990|p=86}}

The prestige of the nobiles was connected directly to their election to high office by the people.{{sfn|Flower|2010|p=46}} 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".{{sfn|Badian|2012a}} 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.{{sfn|Flower|2010|p=156–57}}

During the time of Augustus, a nobilis enjoyed easier access to the consulship, with a lowered age requirement perhaps set at 32. Women who descended from Augustan consuls were also regarded as belonging to the Roman nobility.{{Cite book |last=Syme |first=Ronald |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fj8oQ4lzteIC&dq=%22The+word+'nobilis,'+not+possessing+or+needing+a+legal+definition%22&pg=PA50 |title=The Augustan Aristocracy |date=1989 |publisher=Clarendon Press |isbn=978-0-19-814731-2 |language=en |pages=50–52}} The term still referred to descendants of republican and triumviral consuls, but by the Antonines, most noble families had died out; one of the last were the Acilii Glabriones who survived into the 4th century.{{sfn|Badian|2012a}}

References

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= Sources =

{{Cite encyclopedia |last=Badian |first=Ernst |title=nobilitas |encyclopedia=The Oxford classical dictionary |year=2012a |editor-first1=Simon |editor-last1=Hornblower |editor-first2=Antony |editor-last2=Spawforth |editor-first3=Esther |editor-last3=Eidinow |isbn=978-0-19-954556-8 |edition=4th |location=Oxford |oclc=959667246 |publisher=Oxford University Press }}
{{Cite encyclopedia |last=Badian |first=Ernst |title=novus homo |encyclopedia=The Oxford classical dictionary |year=2012b |editor-first1=Simon |editor-last1=Hornblower |editor-first2=Antony |editor-last2=Spawforth |editor-first3=Esther |editor-last3=Eidinow |isbn=978-0-19-954556-8 |edition=4th |location=Oxford |oclc=959667246 |publisher=Oxford University Press }}
{{Cite journal |last=Brunt |first=PA |date=1982 |title=Nobilitas and Novitas |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/299112 |journal=The Journal of Roman Studies |volume=72 |pages=1–17 |doi=10.2307/299112 |jstor=299112 |issn=0075-4358|url-access=subscription }}
{{Cite journal |last=Burckhardt |first=Leonhard A |date=1990 |title=The Political Elite of the Roman Republic: Comments on Recent Discussion of the Concepts "Nobilitas and Homo Novus" |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4436138 |journal=Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte |volume=39 |issue=1 |pages=77–99 |jstor=4436138 |issn=0018-2311}}
{{Cite book |last=Flower |first=Harriet |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p2eYDwAAQBAJ |title=Roman republics |year=2010 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-14043-8 |location=Princeton}}

Nobiles

History

See also

References

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= Sources =

Further reading