² StR III³ 462 f.

³ StR 1³ 442 ff., cf. 401 f. Verr. 11 5, 36 shows that Cicero secured the ius on becoming plebeian aedile, not (as Mommsen thought) curule aedile (cf. MRR 11 136 n. 5).

⁴ The list is somewhat lengthened in the English translation. Gelzer also listed those who are called by Cicero clarissimi, all nobles or consulars with three flattering exceptions, or principes civitatis, all consulars apart from Cato Uticensis (whose exceptional influence in my view justifies the appellation); a fuller list of the latter in RE XXII 2014 ff. (Wickert) confirms Gelzer's interpretation.

⁵ M. Antonius, cos. 99, could perhaps have claimed descent from a mag. eq. in 334 or 333; unlikely.

⁶ StR II³ 190.

⁷ Gelzer assumed his descent from a consular tribune of 388, 384, 383 (cf. RE IV A 850 f.). Why not from a consul of 500, 490, 461, or 434?

⁸ II 27, 3; in 11, 6; 66, 2; 67, 8; rv 4, 7; 15, 5–8; 60, 7; VI 36, 12; 42, 9–11. Later he distinguishes patricians and plebeian nobles, XXII 35, 2; XXXIX 40, 3.

⁹ Aselliones: Badian, Proc. Afr. Class. Ass., 1968, 1 ff. Livy XXXIX 40, 3 makes the consul of 185 member of a noble family; if he or his source knew the facts, either that man was the late-born son of the consul of 240, or the son of a praetor, and that sufficed for nobility, or Livy counted as nobles collaterals as well as descendants of consuls. See stemma in RE 11 A 1439 (Münzer). Livy also classes as noble C. Atilius Serranus, pr. 218, (presumably father or grandfather of the consul of 170), who is either descended from a praetor, or from a consul with different cognomen.

¹⁰ Afzelius, 1945 (art. cit., n. 1), 164 ff. made similar comments on the Sempronii and Fulvii. Münzer's stemma, RE VII 231; Tusculan origin, ibid. 229.

¹¹ Kübler, RE VII 1176 ff., esp. 1180, 1184 f. (cf. also Cic., Leg. 11 55); he presents the evidence with admirable clarity, but disguises some modern speculations as certified truths, cf. sceptical remarks in W. Kunkel, Kl. Schr. 456 ff.; 484 ff.; 556 f.

¹² cf. Cincius ap. Fest. 83 L. Mommsen's glosses on Scaevola's definition (StR III³ 11 f.; 27) are warranted only by his own dogmas. Kübler notes how the lex Cornelia de falsis made it a crime to take a false nomen with a view to sharing in the inheritance rights of gentiles (Paul. (?), Sent, v 25, 11). The obscure case in Cic., de Orat. I 176 (whose issue is unknown) may imply that the patrician Claudii and the Claudii Marcelli were (arguably) of the same gens.

¹³ Fam. IX 21, 2 f., cf. Münzer, RE XVIII 1002 ff.; his conclusion that some connection between patrician and plebeian Papirii may be assumed, though it cannot be proved, is perverse.

¹⁴ Even the praetorian Memmii boasted of Trojan origin (Virg., Aen. v 117; Lucret. 1 42), the Calpurnii of descent from Numa (Plut., Numa 21, accepted in Fest. 41 L, denied by the annalist Gellius, Dion. Hal. 11 76, 5).

¹⁵ Contra Astin, A. E., Cato the Censor (1978), 9Google Scholar.

¹⁶ cf. Münzer, RE Iv 1249; 1355–7; 1429. The mutual relationships within one stirps, the Lentuli, usually elude us and were probably often remote; this fact somewhat qualifies its unsurpassed record of 29 consulships from 317 B.C. to A.D. 68.

¹⁷ Livy xxx 1, 4 ff. calls P. Licinius P. f. P. n. Crassus cos. 205 ‘nobilissimum’. The superlative suggests the antiquity of his line; he at least is unlikely to have been of merely praetorian or aedilician descent (n. 9). Münzer (RE XIII 247) took P. Licinius P. f. P. n. Varus, cos. 236, to be his uncle; there is no proof. No other Licinius had been consul since the 360s.

¹⁸ Cic., Mur. 16; Ascon. p. 23 C.

¹⁹ Cicero calls his son a gentilis of the Bruti (Brut. 109), but that may mean only that he had the same nomen (cf. V).

²⁰ No Fannius but the consul of 161 has a cognomen. I think it unlikely that the cognomen of a man who had first ennobled a family would be discarded by his descendants, unless of course for the sake of greater distinction, as Pompey substituted Magnus for Strabo.

²¹ A claim to descent from patrician Aquillii (Livy II 4, I, whom Gelzer (p. 38) taxes with error, but note the consul of 487 and consular tribune of 388) would have been still less plausible.

²² e.g. Scaurus, Ser. Sulpicius Rufus and L. Sergius Catilina, pr. 68, whose descent from consular Sergii Fidenates before 366 is posited by Gelzer; patrician status alone might justify his nobility (Sail., Cat. 5, 1); his great-grandfather, M. Sergius Silus (Pliny, NH VII 104 f.) was pr. 197.

²³ RE II A 1791 (Münzer).

²⁴ RE XIV 1535 ff. (Münzer). Some scholars propose patrician status at least for the Reges (coss. 118, 68), who have no known connections with other lines. The Censorini (coss. 310, 149, 39) and Philippi (coss. 281, 186, 91, 56) had different and perhaps unrelated progenitors in C. Rutilus (cos. 357) and Q. Tremulus (cos. 306) respectively; Münzer's hypothesis that the Figuli (coss. 169, 62) were an offshoot of the Philippi is not certainly true. Three, perhaps four, novi in Gelzer's sense must be posited. Note also the praetorian Rallae.

²⁵ A thorough examination is available in the Bodleian Library at Oxford in A. Drummond's unpublished doctoral thesis, History and Reliability of the early Fasti with special reference to the so-called Plebeian Consuls (1974).

²⁶ M. H. Crawford, RRC, pp. 273 ff.; 325; 403.

²⁷ Assuming with Broughton that Q. Mucius Scaeyola, pr. 215, was elected consul for 220, though he did not take office, I take him to have ennobled his sons, coss. 175, 174 who would otherwise count as novi in Gelzer's sense, not in Mommsen's. I have also excluded Q. Hortensius L. f. Hortalus, cos. 60, on the basis that he could be a son of no. 50 as well as a descendant of the dictator of 287 (though I think that dubious for any Hortensii of this period) and that, even if Cicero (contra Gelzer) might have accorded nobility to a man of praetorian lineage, his appellation of ‘nobilissimus’ (Att. XIII 13, 1) probably means that he was of more distinguished blood. Perhaps this is imprudent.

²⁸ A. E. Astin (n. 15), 1–3, cf. JRS 1972, 20 ff., rebuts the conjecture that because there is no mention of his grandfather in the Fasti the man was not a citizen.

²⁹ I see no ground for Münzer's conjecture (RE XII 400) that he was a new citizen, but Scipio's friendship might well have brought an upstart to the fore.

³⁰ L. Piso C. f. C. n., cos. 148 was presumably son of no. 12, but no. 35 comes too soon to be his son. Q. Piso C. f. C. n., cos. 135, can also be a son of no. 12, presumably the youngest, and I have assumed in default of proof that Cn. Piso, cos. 139 (no filiation preserved) is another.

³¹ His father was allegedly found later not to have enjoyed citizen status, but the report is full of errors and not credible (Harris, W. V., Rome in Etruria and Umbria (1971), 322)Google Scholar.

³² Mommsen doubted patrician status on the ground that his son's suffect colleague in 86 was a patrician (Röm. Forsch. 1 (1864), 114), but legal niceties would have been disregarded in the ‘Cinnae dominatio’.

³³ Though his name may mean ‘the man from Norba’ (Schulze, W., Zur Gesch. lat. Eigennamen (1904), 532 f.Google Scholar), that does not indicate that he, rather than some ancestor who exercised the ius migrationis, was the first to acquire Roman citizenship (contra Münzer, RE XVII 927). The argument in XXIII that he cannot have been a parvenu might perhaps be met by suggesting that Cicero would not have wished to find a precedent for his own rise in that of a man prominent in the discredited régime of Cinna and Carbo.

³⁴ BJ 65, 5 (cf. s, 1): ‘plebs, nobilitate fusa per legem Mamiliam, novos extottebat’; Sallust perhaps had in mind nos. 54 and 55 as well as Marius. In 73, 1 he says that Marius was the first novus to be elected ‘post multas tempestates’. The list proves that unless he was grossly ignorant he meant parvenu and not anyone of non-consular descent by novus. There is still some exaggeration, cf. nos. 33 and 36. BJ 4, 8 and 85, 2 closely associate praetorship and consulship and 85, 10 and 38 most naturally connect nobility with the ius imaginum. Cf. also BJ 63, 6: Syme, R., Roman Revolution (1939), 11Google Scholar.

³⁵ Mommsen, StR II³ 196–9; for Fasti 218–166 see Scullard, H. H., Roman Politics² (1973). 306 ffGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ Gelzer, 49; Strasburger, RE XVII 785–89, who follows Münzer in referring Pliny, NH XXXIII 17 f. to L. Piso's annals: the election of Cn. Flavius as curule aedile in 304 in preference to sons of consuls led to a demonstration by the ‘nobilitas’ and not by the whole senate. He compares Livy IV 44, 2 (420 B.C.) where we hear that the plebs preferred as quaestors for their nobility men whose fathers and grandfathers had been consuls. The words italicized show that if any strict definition of nobility were to be found in the text, it would be narrower even than Gelzer's! Both texts show only that consular lineage normally gave an advantage; the nobility even in Mommsen's sense might have resented the choice of an upstart against noble candidates who happened to be of consular birth; in fact until after 227 few would have acquired nobility except through the consulship (XVII).

³⁷ XXII 35, 2 cf. 34, 2–7 (one member of ‘a noble family’, C. Atilius Serranus, was not necessarily of consular descent); XXXIX 40, 3 (plebeians of the most noble families included M. Sempronius Tuditanus, who was perhaps not of consular descent); cf. n. 9; 36. For Livy's identification of patricians (among whom he doubtless included some persons with doubtful title) with nobles cf. n. 8; contra Gelzer (p. 38) this need not show that his usage was inexact.

³⁸ Polyb. VI 53, 7, virtually assimilates the offices. Consuls of 199–7 and perhaps A. Manlius Vulso (cos. 178, but cf. MRR I 395) were not praetors before being consuls: see further Astin, A. E., Collection Latomus XXXII, 1958, 23Google Scholar ff.

³⁹ Varro, RR II 4, 2: ‘Septimus sum deinceps praetorius in gente nostra’. Cf. Münzer, RE VI A 2286 (with my comments in CR 1972, 304 ff., 1973, 295). C. Tremellius (with no cognomen), perhaps his great-grandfather, was praetor in 170 (?). Cn. Tremellius Flaccus was pr. 202. A Tremellius may have held the office before 218, but we can hardly suppose that it went to a member of the family in seven successive generations, and I would think that Varro is misleadingly expressing the fact that there had been six earlier praetors who were ancestors or collaterals of his contemporary. I take Flaccus to be a collateral of the agronomist because of his cognomen. That man's grandfather first took the cognomen Scrofa.

⁴⁰ C. Caninius Rebilus, cos. suff. 45 (pr. 171); C. Fonteius Capita, cos. suff. 33 (pr. 169); C. Memmius, cos. suff. 34 (pr. 172); L. Scribonius Libo, cos. 34 (praetors, 204, 192).

⁴¹ For comparison 5 new plebeian nomina appear in the Fasti 229–200 (when frequent iterations made the consulship especially hard to obtain), 6 in 259–230, 8 in 289–260, 7 in 319–290, 11 in 349–320, and 7 in 366–350. Claudii Marcelli and Claudii Caninae are counted separately. The comparison is not in part materia, since there were far more novi homines than nova nomina, cf. IV.

⁴² The plebeian nomina represented before 300 and notable after 200 are in order of appearance Licinii, Popillii, Marcii, Aelii, Atilii, Domitii, Claudii Marcelli, Iunii, Fulvii, Minucii, Sempronii, Livii, though not all subsequent bearers of these nomina should be assumed to have been of the same lines.

⁴³ C. Flaminius, cos. 223, was father of his namesake, cos. 187, and M. Terentius Varro Lucullus, cos. 73, had perhaps been adopted by a descendant of C. Terentius Varro, cos. 216. There were Flaminii and of course other Varrones in Cicero's time.

⁴⁴ Gelzer, 34. He makes Cicero apply it to equestrian indices, by an astounding misinterpretation of Verr. II 2, 175.

⁴⁵ For ‘novitas’ in this sense cf. Verr. 11 1, 125; Prov. Cons. 27; ‘novus’ is common.

⁴⁶ Livy applies the term to the first plebeian consul (VII 1, 1) and to Cato (XXXIX 41, 2), manifest upstarts, also to C. Terentius Varro (XXXVII 34, 7) and M'. Acilius Glabrio (XXXVII 57, 12), who can readily be so classed; the objections of the nobility to Glabrio's election as censor are exactly parallel to their opposition to Cato's. Comm. Pet. 13 contrasts men of consular families with ‘novos homines praetorios’, but the last phrase can only mean ‘new men who have held the praetorship’, not ‘new men of praetorian ancestry’. The suggestion of Strasburger (RE XVII 1224) that nobles extended the term more widely than others would do has no support in the evidence. Gelzer himself later denned homo novus as the first of a family to hold public office (Kl. Schr. 1 163, 187).

⁴⁷ Rab. perd. 21: ‘cum … cuncta nobilitas ac iuventus accurreret, Cn. et L. Domitii, L. Crassus, Q. Mucius, C. Claudius, M. Drusus, cum omnes Octavii, Metelli, Iulii, Cassii, Catones, Pompeii, cum … hic Q. Catulus, admodum turn adulescens, cum hic C. Curio, cum denique omnes clarissimi viri cum consulibus essent’. He had previously named consulars of the time and then singles out other notables and members of great houses, ending with the two survivors, Catulus and Curio, who were present when he was speaking.

⁴⁸ For a parallel cf. Cic., Sull. 23.

⁴⁹ Strasburger, (RE XVII 787)Google Scholar thought that nobility had an (improperly) wide extension in Rose. Am. 135 ff.; Cluent. 153; de Orat. 11 199, but the texts are very vague.

⁵⁰ e.g. H. H. Scullard, op. cit. (n. 35), 11.

⁵¹ cf. V–IX, especially nn. 17 and 24. The Cornelii, with far more consuls than any other gens, should be considered family by family (cf. n. 16). The Cethegi produced consuls in 204, 197, 181, 160 and not again until A.D. 24. The success of the Dolabellae was intermittent (283, 159, 81, 44, A.D. 10). L. Scipio, cos. 190, had only one consular descendant (cos. 83). The interval between Sulla and his latest consular ancestor, P. Rufinus (290) is well-known. Merulae appear only in 193 and 87, the Cinnae (if patrician, cf. n. 32) not before 127. The Sisennae perhaps not patrician) never had a consul.

⁵² No doubt some gaps can be explained by the assumption that for several generations no member of a family lived to consular age, but the instances are far too numerous to make this explanation generally acceptable; on occasions we know that it does not apply; for instance P. and Ser. Sulpicius Galba were defeated in the consular elections of 64 and 50, and the son of the latter could also not rise beyond the praetorship (Suet., Galba 3), so that no member of this patrician house was consul between 108 B.C. and A.D. 22.

⁵³ I include Hortensius, dict. 287, and count the Claudii Caninae and Marcelli separately.

⁵⁴ I doubt if the Sextii, Appuleii, Aquillii, Hortensii were related to later Republican bearers of the nomina. Cf. also nn. 42 and 43.

⁵⁵ The Iunii, Licinii, Marcii and perhaps the Plautii lasted on.

⁵⁶ The Villii Tappuli, Laelii, Porcii Licini, Baebii Tamphili, Petillii Spurini, Hostilii Mancini, Anicii Galli, Acilii Balbi, Sextii Calvini, Licinii Gethae, Rutilii Rufi, Mallii Maximi, Flavii Fimbriae, have all vanished.

⁵⁷ Quinctii Crispini (cos. 9; cos. suff. A.D. 2); M. Furius Camillus (cos. A.D. 8); Q. Sulpicius Camerinus (cos. A.D. 9), all patricians. Doubts on the lineage of such persons are unnecessary in the light of Ciceronian parallels.

⁵⁸ Brunt, , Latomus 1975, 619 ff. on the Ahenobarbi and MetelliGoogle Scholar.