patricians

patricians, at Rome, members of certain families, a privileged class, distinguished fom the plebeians, the rest of the citizen body. Their name is probably connected with pater in the sense of ‘member of the senate’. If, as may be the case, the right to membership of the senate became hereditary in early times, that would have distinguished certain families from the rest of the citizen body. In the patriciate itself a distinction was gradually made between the ‘lesser clans’ (gentes minores, those of later creation) and the ‘greater clans’ (gentes maiores, those longer established). Until 445 BC patricians were not allowed to marry plebeians. Under the early republic they held the magistracies and the important religious offices: only a patrician could become rex sacrorum, interrex, and perhaps princeps senatus. The diminution of their political strength corresponds to some extent with the reduction in their numbers: about fifty patrician clans are known in the fifth century, but only fourteen at the end of the republic. Patricians could renounce their status by a special public act or simple adoption (compare CLODIUS). Julius Caesar and Octavian admitted new members to the patriciate.