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A number of patrician families such as the Horatii, Lucretii, Verginii and Menenii rarely appear in positions of importance during the later republic. Many old families had patrician and plebeian branches, of which the patrician lines frequently faded into obscurity, and were eclipsed by their plebeian namesakes.
Plebeians were tied to patricians through the clientela system of patronage that saw plebeians assisting their patrician patrons in war, augmenting their social status, and raising dowries or ransoms. [2] Plebeians were barred from marrying patricians in 450 BC but this law was annulled five years later in 445 BC by a tribune of the plebs.
It was a modification to the Valerian law in 449 BC which first allowed acts of the Plebeian Council to have the full force of law over both plebeians and patricians, but eventually the final law in the series was passed (the "Shortening Law"), which removed the last check that the patricians in the Senate had over this power.
Following this, there was a period of consular tribunes who shared power between plebeians and patricians in various years, but the consular tribunes apparently were not endowed with religious authority. [13] In 445 BC, the lex Canuleia permitted intermarriage among plebeians and patricians. [14]
A series of clashes between the people and the ruling patricians in 495 and 494 BC brought the plebeians to the brink of revolt, and there was talk of assassinating the consuls. Instead, on the advice of Lucius Sicinius Vellutus, the plebeians seceded en masse to the Mons Sacer (the Sacred Mount), a hill outside of Rome. [2]
Later historians speculated that Clodius changed the spelling of his nomen from "Claudius" to "Clodius" to distance himself from his patrician family and curry favor with the plebeians; however, there are no ancient sources that substantiate the idea that he changed his name, or that the two spellings signified patrician vs. plebeian status. [3]
The outcome of the Leges Liciniae Sextiae was the facilitation of the emergence of a patrician-plebeian aristocracy and once the leading plebeians had entered the ruling class on an equal footing with the patricians, they turned their back on the poor plebeians, who "gained some temporary economic relief, but lost control of their organisation."
The Patricians quickly became desperate to end what was, in effect, a labor strike, [8] and thus they quickly agreed to the demands of the Plebeians, that they be given the right to elect their own officials. [7] The Plebeians named these new officials Plebeian Tribunes (tribuni plebis), and gave them two assistants, the Plebeian Aediles ...