PATRICIANS, the members of the old citizen families of ancient Rome (Lat. patricius, an adjectival form from pater).
From the earliest period known to us the free population of Rome contains two elements, patricians and plebeians, the former class enjoying all political privileges, the latter unprivileged. The patricians (pa tricii) are members of the clans (gentes) which originally formed the citizen body. The plebeians (plebs) include all the rest of the free population. The origin of the plebs has been much debated and was in all probability complex. One part was evolved from the "clients," freed men or aliens who attached themselves for reasons of defence and support to the great clans or to their individual members. Very probably also, as a result of an early conquest of Rome, much of the plebs differed in racial origin from its patrician rulers. A third source was the accumulation of aliens drawn to Rome as a centre of traffic between Etruria and Southern Italy. It is significant that many plebeians had acquired wealth, presumably from trade. Many of these aliens would place themselves under the protection of the state or the king rather than that of individual citizens. If the alien came from a town possessing the ius commercii with Rome, he would have no need to become the client of a private patron. The whole unprivileged class, whatever its origin, tended to be come consolidated. The differences between its various sections were great and their interests of ten conflicting, e.g., the desires of the trading alien, the favoured client of the patrician and the descendant of the conquered Ligurian must often have been widely separated; compromise was an essential to united action by the three. The constitution attributed to Servius Tullius, which placed military burdens on the shoulders of the plebeians and admitted them to a share, though an inadequate share, in political power, helped to unify the class and prepared the way for the struggle for power which was to occupy the next century and a half, and which resulted in the full attainment by the plebs of the privileges zealously guarded by the patricians.
The aim of the reforms asso
ciated with the name of Servius Tullius appears to have been the imposition of the duties of citizenship upon the plebeians. This involved an extension of plebeian privilege in two directions. First it was necessary to unify the plebeian order by putting the legal status of the clients on a level with that of the un attached plebeians; and again enrolment in the army involved registration in the tribes and centuries ; and as the army soon developed into a legislative assembly meeting in centuries (comitia centuriata), the whole citizen body, including plebeians, acquired a small share of political power, which had hitherto be longed solely to the patricians. At the close of the monarchy the plebeian possessed the private rights of citizenship, except for his inability to contract a legal marriage with a patrician, and one of the public rights, that of giving his vote in the assembly. But in liability to the duties of citizenship, military service, and taxa tion, he was entirely on a level with the patrician. This position was tolerable during the monarchy, when the king served to hold the power of the patrician families in check. But when these families had expelled the Tarquins, the inconsistency between partial privilege and full burdens pressed on the plebeians.
The result was the long struggle for political equality of the two orders (see ROME : His tory, "The Republic"). The plebeians in 494 B.C. formed them selves into an exclusive order with annually elected officers (tribuni plebis) and an assembly, and by means of this machinery forced themselves by degrees into all the magistracies, and ob tained the coveted right of intermarriage with the patricians. Admission to the senate followed, and the political privilege of the two orders was equalized, with the exception of certain dis abilities which were attached to the patricians after the victory of the plebs. They were excluded from the tribunate and the council of the plebs, which had become important instruments of government, and were eligible for one place only in the consulship and censorship, while both were open to plebeians.