Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/116

 THIRD PERIOD.

THE SUPREMACY OF THE SENATE, 287-133 B.C.

CHAPTER I.

THE NEW ARISTOCRACY AND THE FIRST PUNIC WAR, 287-341 B.C.

I. The New Aristocracy.

The Origin of the New Aristocracy. — After the passage of the Hortensian laws the Roman republic seemed to unite in the happiest way monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic elements. The aristocratic elements predominated. While the Licinian law annulled the great legal distinction between plebeian and patrician, and to that extent restored the old civic equality, it did not abolish the patriciate, but provided, so to speak, for the gradual creation of new peers and furnished the basis for a new aristocracy.

Basis and Membership of the New Aristocracy. — This aristocracy may be called new in so far as it rested on a new principle and consisted in part of new members. The patriciate was based on patrician descent, the new aristocracy on descent from a curule magistrate — that is to say, a Roman citizen who had been dictator, consul, censor, praetor, master of horse, or curule aedile. If any of his ancestors in the male line had ever filled such an office, a Roman was a noble (nobilis), a member of the new