Editing Nobiles (section)

==History==
The ''nobiles'' emerged after the [[Conflict of the Orders]] established legal equality between patricians and plebeians, allowing plebeians to hold all the [[Roman magistrate|magistracies]]; the state of being "known" was connected to the ''nobiles''{{'}}s rights to funeral masks ({{langx|la|imagines}}) and actors in aristocratic funeral processions.{{sfn|Badian|2012a}} However, the term is largely unattested to in the middle Republic, having been introduced in the late Republic as a description rather than a status.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Millar |first=Fergus |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SIJYTTARlJ8C&dq=%22Thirdly%2C+the+much-used+term+%22the+patrician-plebeian+nobility%22%22&pg=PA126 |title=Rome, the Greek World, and the East |date=2002 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-8078-4990-3 |pages=126–27 |language=en}}</ref> Earning such a mask required holding one of the qualifying curule magistracies.<ref>{{harvnb|Flower|2010|pp=155–56|ps=. "It was the mask and the chair that traditionally identified a man, and his family, as part of the political elite".}}</ref>

These elections meant the republican nobility was not entirely closed.{{sfn|Burckhardt|1990|p=84}} Nor in the republic did ''nobiles'' enjoy special legal privileges. In the later Republic, one who became noble was termed a ''[[novus homo]]'' ({{langx|en|new man}}), an unusual achievement.{{sfn|Badian|2012b}} Two of the most famous examples of these self-made "new men" were [[Gaius Marius]], who held the consulship seven times, and [[Cicero]]. While wholly new men were rare, the political elite as a whole turned over as some families were unable to win elections over multiple generations and other families became more prominent, creating slow-moving and osmotic change.{{sfn|Burckhardt|1990|p=86}}

The prestige of the ''nobiles'' was connected directly to their election to high office by the people.{{sfn|Flower|2010|p=46}} During the Roman Republic, the ''nobiles'' never held less than about 70 per cent of the consulships over longer periods; by the time of Cicero, the ''nobiles'' as a whole held more than 90 per cent of the consulships, a proportion "remarkably untouched by the most violent political crises".{{sfn|Badian|2012a}} The narrowing of what made someone part of the ''nobiles'' occurred around the time of the [[constitutional reforms of Sulla]] with its "much larger senate with a proportionately smaller circle of elite senators... many new Italians in the Sullan senate, and the increased number of [[praetor]]s" leading the elite to close ranks to preserve their prestige.{{sfn|Flower|2010|p=156–57}}

During the time of [[Augustus]], a ''nobilis'' enjoyed easier access to the consulship, with a lowered age requirement perhaps set at 32. Women who descended from [[Principate|Augustan]] consuls were also regarded as belonging to the Roman nobility.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Syme |first=Ronald |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fj8oQ4lzteIC&dq=%22The+word+'nobilis,'+not+possessing+or+needing+a+legal+definition%22&pg=PA50 |title=The Augustan Aristocracy |date=1989 |publisher=Clarendon Press |isbn=978-0-19-814731-2 |language=en |pages=50–52}}</ref> The term still referred to descendants of republican and triumviral consuls, but by the [[Nerva–Antonine dynasty|Antonines]], most noble families had died out; one of the last were the [[Acilii Glabriones]] who survived into the 4th century.{{sfn|Badian|2012a}}