Nobilitas and Novitas

I. No Roman definition of nobilis or novus homo exists. Mommsen held that the nobiles comprised: (a) all patricians; (b) those descended from patricians who had effected a transitio ad plebem; (c) those descended from plebeians who had held curule offices, viz. the offices of dictator, magister equitum, censor, consul, praetor, curule aedile. They were thus identical with the persons who had the ius imaginum. (On this footing Mommsen ought to have included plebeian aediles, at least for the post-Sullan era.) All others, including those who were the first of their lines to hold curule office, were novi. This theory has been generally abandoned in favour of Gelzer's; Afzelius argued that it corresponded to the conception of nobility in the second century, but not to that prevalent in Cicero's time. Yet it may after all be right.