clan-nobility

Updated: June 19, 2025

One consequence of this amalgamation of the patricians and plebeians in a new corporation of Roman burgesses was the conversion of the old burgesses into a clan-nobility, which was incapable of receiving additions or even of filling up its own ranks, since the nobles no longer possessed the right of passing decrees in common assembly and the adoption of new families into the nobility by decree of the community appeared still less admissible.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5)

Throwing Open of Marriage and of Magistracies Military Tribunes with Consular Powers Nothing shows so clearly the defencelessness of the clan-nobility when opposed to the united plebs, as the fact that the fundamental principle of the exclusive party the invalidity of marriage between patricians and plebeians fell at the first blow scarcely four years after the decemviral revolution.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome, Book II : From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the Union of Italy