NO´BILES
NO´BILES,
NOBI´LITAS. In
the earliest period of Roman history. the Patricians or Patres, who belonged
to the older organisation of the populus in curiae, gentes, and familiae,
were the nobles as opposed to the Plebs: they practically monopolised
political power and the distinction which such power brings. Livy, who wrote
in the age of Augustus, and is not very careful in the use of terms, often
designates the Patricians by the term
nobilis
(6.42); and yet
nobilis, in its proper historic
sense, has a different meaning.
In B.C. 366 the plebeians obtained the right of being eligible to the
consulship, and finally were admitted to all the curule magistracies. Thus
the two classes were put on the same footing as to political capacity. Those
plebeians who had obtained a curule magistracy were thus elevated above
their own body,, and the personal distinction of a father would confer
distinction on his descendants. It is in the nature of aristocratic
institutions to perish if they are exclusive: but they perpetuate themselves
by giving a plebeian class, the power of acquiring a share in the lustre
they bestow. Those who are received within the body of nobles are pleased at
being separated from their former companions, and are at least as exclusive
in their notions as the original members of the class which they have
joined.
This was the history of Nobilitas at Rome. The sharp distinction between
plebeians and the old patricians became blurred no less by their political
equalisation than by the greater frequency of marriages between them after
the enactment of the Lex Canuleia; but the descendants of plebeians who had
filled curule magistracies formed a class called Nobiles or men
“known,” in contrast with Ignobiles or people who were not
known. The Nobiles had no legal privileges as such: but they were bound
together by a common distinction derived from a legal title and by a common
interest; and their common interest was to endeavour to confine the election
to all the high magistracies to the members of their own body, to the
Nobilitas. Thus the descendants of those plebeians who had won their way to
distinction combined to exclude other plebeians from the distinction which
their own ancestors had transmitted to them.
The external distinction of the Nobiles was the Jus Imaginum, a right or
privilege which apparently was established on usage only, and not on any
positive enactment. These Imagines were figures with painted masks of wax,
made to resemble the person whom they represented (Pliny,
Plin. Nat. 35.2, “expressi
ceravultus” ); and they were placed in the atrium of the house,
apparently in small wooden receptacles or cases somewhat in the form of
temples (
ξύλινα ναΐδια,
Plb. 6.53). The Imagines were accompanied with
the
tituli or names of distinction which the
deceased had acquired; and the
tituli were
connected in some way by lines or branches so as to exhibit the-pedigree
(
stemma) of the family: cf. the passages
quoted in Becker,
Handbuch der römischen
Alterthümer, ii. p. 222, note 53. These Imagines were
generally enclosed in their cases, but were brought out on festival days and
other great ceremonials, and crowned with bay (
laureatae): they also formed part of a solemn funeral procession.
The most complete account of them. is in the passage of Polybius already
referred to; but there is frequent mention of them in the Roman writers.
These were the external marks or signs of a Nobilis Familia: a kind of
heraldic distinction in substance. The origin of this use of Imagines, from
which the notion of Roman Nobilitas must not be separated, is uncertain. The
term Nobilitas, as already observed, is applied by Livy to a period of Roman
history before the consulship was opened to the plebeians; and it is not
improbable that the patricians had the use of Imagines, which those
plebeians afterwards adopted, when the curule magistracies were made
accessible to them. The patricians carried back their pedigrees (
stemmata) to the remotest historical period, and
even beyond it (
Tac. Ann. 4.9); and the
practice of having Imagines, clearly connected with the ancestor worship of
primitive races which Sir Henry Maine has so fully discussed in his
Early Law
[p. 2.232]and Custom, probably existed before
the notion of the Jus Imaginum was established, though it is equally likely
that that notion, as well as the technical conception of Roman Nobilitas,
originated in the admission of the plebeians to the consulship. Indeed, as
the object of the patricians, who were all of equal rank so far as their
class was concerned, would be to attach to themselves such plebeians as were
elected to curule magistracies, it seems conformable to the nature of the
thing that the family of such plebeians should be allowed or invited to
adopt some existing distinction which should separate them from the body to
which they properly belonged. Usage would soon give to such a practice the
notion of legality; and thus the Jus Imaginum would be established, as many
Roman institutions were, by some general conviction of utility or upon some
prevailing notion, and it would be perpetuated by custom.
A plebeian who first attained a curule office was the founder of his family's
Nobilitas (
princeps nobilitatis--auctor
generis). Such a person could have no Imagines of his ancestors;
and he could have none of his own, for such Imagines of a man were not made
till after he was dead (Polyb.
l.c.). Such a person
then was not
nobilis in the full sense of the
term, nor yet was he
ignobilis. He was called
by the Romans a
novus homo or a new man, and
his condition was known as Novitas: see the speech which is put in the mouth
of C. Marius in Sallust,
Sal. Jug. 85. The
term
novus homo was never applied to a
patrician. The first
novus homo of Rome was the
first plebeian Consul, L. Sextius, and the two most distinguished
novi homines were C. Marius and M. Tullius Cicero,
both natives of an Italian municipium.
The patricians would of course be jealous of the new nobility, which however,
when once formed, would easily unite with the old aristocracy to monopolise
political power, and to prevent more
novi
homines from polluting this exclusive class (Sallust.
Jug. 63). Their efforts, in particular, to exclude the poorer
citizens from rising to their own order is attested by the rule established
from the time of the First Punic War, that the cost of the public games
should be no longer defrayed by the treasury, but by the aediles (
Dionys. A. R. 7.71), and the aedileship
was the first step to the higher magistracies. As early as the Second Punic
War, the new class, composed of patricians or original aristocrats, and
Nobiles or newly engrafted aristocrats, was able to exclude
novi homines from the consulship (
Liv. 22.34). They maintained this power to the end
of the Republican period, and the consulship continued almost in the
exclusive possession of the Nobilitas. The testimony of Cicero, himself a
novus homo, on this point is full and
distinct.
As to the persons who would be included in the stemma of a noble family, it
appears that all the ascendants of a man up to the ancestor who first
attained a curule office would be comprehended, and also the ascendants on
the mother's side who had been
nobiles.
Adoption would also increase the number of persons who would be comprised in
a stemma: and if Affines were occasionally included, as they appear to have
been, the stemma would become an enormous pedigree.
The term Optimates, as explained by Cicero (
pro
Sest. 45), is opposed to Populares: he describes the Optimates to
be all those “qui neque nocentes sunt nec natura improbi nec furiosi
nec malis domesticis impediti.” This is no political definition:
it is nothing more than such a name as Conservative or any other. The use of
it by Livy (
3.39) shows how he understood it; but
it is only confusing to employ it in relation to the early times of which he
is speaking. Velleius (2.3) describes the Optimates as the Senatus, the
better and larger part of the Equestris ordo, and such part of the Plebs as
were unaffected by pernicious counsels: all these joined in the attack on
Gracchus. This opens our eyes to the real meaning of Optimates: they were
the Nobilitas and the chief part of the Equites, a rich middle class, and
also all others whose support the Nobilitas and Equites could command: in
fact all who were opposed to change that might affect the power of the
Nobilitas and the interests of those whom the Nobilitas allied with
themselves. Optimates in this sense are opposed to Plebs, the mass of the
people: and Optimates is a wider term than Nobilitas, inasmuch as it would
comprehend the Nobilitas and all who adhered to them.
The term Populares is vague. It could be used to signify the opponents of the
Nobilitas, whether the motives of these opponents were pure and honest, or
whether their aim was self-aggrandisement through popular favour. Of Caesar,
who sought to gain the popular favour, it was truly said, that it was not so
much what he gave to the people which made him formidable, as what he would
expect to get from them in return. A
popularis
might be of the class of the Nobilitas, and very often was. He might even be
a patrician, like Caesar: his object might be either to humble the nobles,
to promote the interests of the people, or to promote his own: or he might
have all these objects, as Caesar had.
The chief passages in classical writers bearing on the contrast of
nobiles, ignobiles, and
novi
homines are Cicero,
in Rull. 2.1, 2;
pro Cluentio, 40, 111; Appian,
de Bell.
Civ. 2.2; Plutarch,.
Cato Maj. i.; Veil. Pat. 2.128,
and Asconius in
Argum. Orat. in toga candidia, p. 82
(Orelli). The subject of Nobilitas is handled by Becker, in the work already
referred to, and there are also some remarks on the Roman Nobiles in
Zachariae,
Sulla (1.5). He observes of Sulla
that though his family was patrician, he could hardly be considered as
belonging to the Nobiles in the strict sense, as the term Nobilitas implied
that some one of a man's ancestors had filled a curule magistracy, and also
implied the possession of wealth. But this is a confused view of the matter.
Sulla's ancestors had filled curule magistracies; and though his family was
poor, it was still Nobilis. A Nobilis, though poor, as Sulla was, was
Nobilis still: want of wealth might deprive a man of influence, but not of
the Jus Imaginum. If there was any patrician whose ancestors had never
filled a curule office, he would not be nobilis in the technical later
sense. But when the Nobilitas had been formed into a powerful body, which
was long before the reforms of the Gracchi, the distinction of patrician was
of secondary importance. It would seem unlikely that there was any patrician
[p. 2.233]gens existing in the year 133 B.C., or indeed long before that time, the
families of which had not enjoyed the highest honours of the state many
times. The exceptions, if any, would be few.
In reading the Greek writers on Roman history, it is useful to attend to the
meaning of the political terms which they employ. The
δυνατοὶ of Plutarch (
Plut. TG
13,
20) and the
πλούσιοι are the Nobilitas and their partisans; or, as
Cicero would call them after he was made consul, the Optimates. In such
passages as
D. C. 38.2 the meaning of
δυνατοὶ may be collected from the context.
[
G.L] [
J.B.M]
