NŌBILES

NŌBĬLĬTAS. In the early periods of the Roman state the Patricians were the Nobles as opposed to the Plebs. In B.C. 366, the plebeians obtained the right of being eligible to the consulship, and finally they obtained acce to all the curule magistracies. Thus the two cla es were put on the same footing as to political capacity; but now a new order of nobility arose. The descendants of plebeians who had filled curule magistracies, formed a cla called Nobiles or men “known,” who were so called by way of distinction from “ 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 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 was apparently established on usage only, and not on any positive enactments. These Imagines were figures with painted masks of wax, made to resemble the person whom they represented; and they were placed in the Atrium of the house, apparently in small wooden receptacles or cases somewhat in the form of temples. 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. These Imagines were generally enclosed in their cases, but they were opened on festival days and other great ceremonials, and crowned with bay (laureatae): they also formed part of a solemn funeral proce ion. It seems probable that the Roman Nobilitas, in the strict sense of that term, and the Jus Imaginum, originated with the admi ion of the Plebeians to the consulship B.C. 366. A plebeian who first attained a Curule office was the founder of his family’s Nobilitas (princeps nob i lit at is; 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. 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 “ nov us homo ” or a new man; and his status or condition was called Novitas. The term nov us homo was never applied to a Patrician. The two most distinguished “ nov i 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; but this new nobility once formed would easily unite with the old aristocracy of Rome to keep the political power in their hands, and to prevent more nov i homines from polluting this exclusive cla . As early as the second Punic war this new cla , compounded of Patricians or original aristocrats, and Nobiles or newly-engrafted aristocrats, was able to exclude nov i homines from the consulship. They maintained this power to the end of the republican period, and the consulship continued almost in the exclusive po e ion of the Nobilitas. The Optimates were the Nobilitas and the chief part of the Equites, a rich middle cla , 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, to the ma of the people; and Optimates is a wider term than Nobilitas, inasmuch as it would comprehend the Nobilitas and all who adhered to them.