Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Plebeians were tied to patricians through the clientela system of patronage that saw plebeians assisting their patrician patrons in war, augmenting their social status, and raising dowries or ransoms. [2] Plebeians were barred from marrying patricians in 450 BC but this law was annulled five years later in 445 BC by a tribune of the plebs.
The distinction between patricians and plebeians in ancient Rome was based purely on birth. Although modern writers often portray patricians as rich and powerful families who managed to secure power over the less-fortunate plebeian families, plebeians and patricians among the senatorial class were equally wealthy.
The Cornelian gens included both patricians and plebeians, but all of its major families were patrician. The surnames Arvina, Blasio, Cethegus, Cinna, Cossus, Dolabella, Lentulus, Maluginensis, Mammula, Merenda, Merula, Rufinus, Scapula, Scipio, Sisenna, and Sulla belonged to patrician Cornelii, while the plebeian cognomina included Balbus and ...
There was a radical reform in 367–6 BC, which abolished consular tribunes and "laid the foundation for a system of government led by two consuls, shared between patricians and plebeians" [15] over the religious objections of patricians, requiring at least one of the consuls to be a plebeian. [16]
Plebeian Genucii appear as early as 476 BC, when a Titus Genucius was tribune of the plebs. If the gens was originally patrician, then the plebeian Genucii may have arisen as the result of intermarriage with the plebeians, or because some of the Genucii were expelled from the patriciate or voluntarily chose to become plebeians.
The gens Sicinia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Members of this gens occur throughout the history of the Republic, but only one of them obtained the consulship, Titus Sicinius Sabinus in 487 BC. Throughout the long Conflict of the Orders, the Sicinii were celebrated for their efforts on behalf of the plebeians. [1]
However, the patrician class, made up of elite families, quickly began to dominate the political scene at the expense of the majority, the plebeians. The conflicts between the patricians and plebeians came to be known as the Conflict of the Orders. By 290 BC these conflicts largely came to an end when plebeian consuls were introduced.
Verginia A. f., a patrician by birth, married the plebeian Lucius Volumnius Flamma Violens, who was consul in 307 and 296 BC. She dedicated a chapel in which plebeian women could honor the goddess Pudicitia, after being excluded from her worship by the patricians on account of her marriage to a plebeian. [47]