Patrician (ancient Rome)

The patriciate was the original social and initially also political aristocratic upper class in ancient Rome. Its members were the patricians (Latin: patricius, Greek: πατρίκιος). The word patrician (patricius) is derived from the Latin word pater, patres (father, ancestors). In historical times, patricians were part of the nobility and enjoyed only a few privileges, mostly religious.

The origins of the patriciate are still disputed today and were already surrounded by myths in antiquity. According to the much later historian Livius, the patricians were the descendants of a hundred senators chosen by Romulus. All other citizens were plebeians. Livius' Greek contemporary Dionys, on the other hand, claims that Romulus based his selection of patricians on wealth. Still later, Plutarch held that it was able-bodied men of the people from whom Romulus made a selection of one hundred senators to call patricians. It was commonly believed that the patricians were descendants of the tribus (families) Tities, Ramnes and Luceres, who had founded Rome or settled there shortly after its foundation.

Modern research usually assumes that the patricians emerged as a self-contained hereditary nobility only during the early Republic. During this period, mixed marriages (conubium) between patricians and plebeians, i.e. with the non-noble people, were supposedly initially forbidden and were only legally permitted in 445 BC by the Lex Canuleia de conubio patrum et plebis. However, since the parts of the Twelve Table Law that are considered authentic do not mention patricians and plebeians, even this later tradition is doubted by many historians. Patricians were allowed to earn their income, as it is said, only from their land, mostly from agriculture or from booty in war. Commercial activities as well as banking or trading were thus initially forbidden to them and later at least considered frowned upon. (Since there was no money economy in Rome at this time, this is probably a later construction). In the course of the so-called estates struggles, the privileges of the patricians dwindled as wealthy plebeians fought for their right to participate in political power. To this end, groundbreaking laws were introduced, such as the Leges Liciniae Sextiae, which granted the first political participations, and the Lex Hortensia, which gave plebiscites the force of law. During the late Republic, for which, unlike the early period, there are reliable sources, there were 14 patrician gentes, to which about 30 families belonged. Well-known patrician families, which also provided many consuls and other high officials of the Roman Republic, included the Cornelians, Valerians, Julians, Claudians, Aemilians and Fabians.

From the time of the Middle Republic, the patrician families and several plebeian families together formed the political ruling class of Rome, the nobility, which defined itself not as hereditary nobility but as an aristocracy of achievement. Nevertheless, certain religious offices remained reserved for patricians until the imperial period, such as that of flamen dialis, the rex sacrorum, the Salians, and the flamen of Mars and Quirinus, but not that of Pontifex Maximus, which was reserved exclusively for patricians only until the enactment of the Lex Ogulnia in 300 B.C., but was then open to plebeians as well. Plebeian pontifices maximi were, for example, members of the gentes Liciniae, Muciae, Caeciliae and Domitiae. However, there were also secular offices that could only be held by patricians, namely the office of president of the senate (princeps senatus) and that of interrex. Conversely, some offices were barred to patricians, including the office of tribune of the people, powerful in the late Republic, and that of plebeian aedile.

Even in the late Republic, the patricians enjoyed special prestige and were often inclined toward the political direction of the Optimates. However, this did not prevent well-known patricians such as Gaius Iulius Caesar or Publius Clodius Pulcher from joining the Populars when they expected advantages from doing so. The patrician families already decreased significantly in number during the period of the late Roman Republic from about 150 BC onwards, as they had fewer descendants or were decimated by war, civil war or proscriptions during the crisis of the Republic. Once the state-bearing class, many patrician families disappeared by 30 BC, especially during the Second Triumvirate period. Emperor Augustus, the founder of the Principate, himself belonged to a patrician gens since his testamentary adoption by Gaius Iulius Caesar and tried to strengthen the class again by promoting old families; in addition, he had the Senate grant him the right to appoint new patricians in 29 BC by the Lex Saenia. This right had already been conferred on Caesar by the Lex Cassia. In the future, Augustus' successors also claimed this right. Although the senators of the Roman Imperial period possessed only limited political influence, especially since the soldier emperors, they continued to have vast landholdings, even in distant provinces, and built themselves large rural palace complexes, such as the Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily.

In the late Roman Empire, Emperor Constantine the Great introduced the title patricius as a distinction for men who had rendered outstanding services to the emperor. Until the end of antiquity, it was important as an honorary title (compare, for example, Petros Patrikios); in Western Rome, from Constantius III onward, it denoted the supreme magister militum and actual ruler. In Eastern Rome, it lost some of its exclusivity after the 7th century, but nevertheless remained a coveted honorary rank in the Middle Ages as patrikios.