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Pats and plebs
editUser:Svartalf added an edit which claimed that Mark Antony denying he's a patrician was historically inaccurate. It's not - although he was related to patricians, the Antonii were a plebeian gens (and yes, plebeians did have gentes). By the time the series is set, plebiean ancestry was no bar to political advancement if you had the money. The patricians were those who traced their ancestry, in direct male line only, to the founding families of Rome. They did not monopolise politics - there are consuls from plebeian gentes all the way back in Roman records. A plebeian who got to the top in politics, like Marius, Cicero or Pompey, or like Antony, did not become a patrician, but a noble.
You're not the only one to misunderstand the Roman class system - the article Social class in ancient Rome is completely and fundamentally wrong as it currently stands, conflating the property classes of the census, which were solely based on what you owned, and the plebeian/patrician divide, which was solely based on ancestry through the male line. I keep meaning to rewite it but I haven't had time to gather sources to do it properly yet. --Nicknack009 17:48, 3 August 2006 (UTC)