Patricii
(literally the relatives of the
patres, or heads of families of the old
tribes. [See
Gens.]). In the oldest times of Rome the
actual citizens who constituted the
populus Romanus. They were divided into
three tribes—
Ramnes, Tities, and
Luceres, each
consisting of ten
curiae. (See
Curia.) The union of these latter formed the national assembly, the Comitia Curiata.
(See
Comitia.) Besides these there were originally
only
clientes, settlers enjoying no legal rights, with the citizens for
their protectors (or
patroni). Afterwards, when a new element of the
population, endowed with partial citizenship, called the
plebs (q.v.), sprang up from the settlement of subjugated Latin tribes, the
patricii stood in contrast to them as old citizens possessing full rights.
Later, the plebeians received a fuller citizenship through the centurial constitution framed
by Servius Tullius (see
Centuria), while they
gained at the same time the right of voting in the Comitia Centuriata, composed of patricians
and plebeians, together with the obligation of serving in the field and paying taxes, hitherto
obligatory on the patricians alone. In contrast to the plebeians, the patricians thus formed a
hereditary aristocracy, with the exclusive right to hold public offices, whether civil or
religious. Nothing short of a decision by the Comitia Curiata could either remove any one from
the patrician body or (on rare occasions) enrol a plebeian among the patricians. The
contraction of marriages between patricians and plebeians was not allowed till B.C. 445. A
violent struggle arose between the two parties, after the establishment of the Republic in
B.C. 510, on the subject of the admission of the plebeians to State offices. This struggle
lasted till B.C. 300, and the patricians were, step by step, forced to give up their exclusive
right to one office after another. First of all, they had to give up the quaestorship (B.C.
409), then the consulate (367 B.C.), the dictatorship (356 B.C.), the censorship (351 B.C.),
the praetorship (338 B.C.), and finally the most important priestly offices, the pontificate
and the augurship (300 B.C.). Only politically unimportant offices were left reserved for
them, the temporal office of
interrex, and the priestly offices of
rex sacrorum
and the three
flamines maiores. The political importance which the
patrician Comitia Curiata possessed, through its right to confirm the decisions of the Comitia
Centuriata, was lost in B.C. 286. The Comitia Tributi, in which the
plebs
had the preponderance, thus became the most important organ of the democracy.
An aristocracy of holders of public offices was thus formed, consisting of the patricians
together with the more important plebeian families. The members of such families, whether
patrician or plebeian, were called
nobiles. The number of patrician
families dwindled greatly owing to the Civil Wars (on their number towards the end of the
Republic, see
Gens). Caesar and Augustus increased them
by introducing plebeian families, and subsequent emperors gave the patriciate as a
distinction. Under Constantine the Great
patricius became a personal
title, which conferred a rank immediately below the consuls. The external distinctive marks of
a patrician were the
tunica laticlavia (see
Tunica) and a peculiar sort of shoe (see
Calceus) adorned with an ivory crescent (
lunula).