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''Novus homo'' (or: ''homo novus'', Latin for "new man"; plural '''''novi homines''''') was the term in Ancient Rome for a man who was the first in his family to serve in the Roman Senate or, more specifically, to be elected as Consul . HISTORY According to tradition, both Senate membership and the consulship were restricted to Patrician s. When Plebeian s gained the right to this office during the Conflict Of The Orders , all newly-elected plebeians were naturally ''novi homines''. As time went by, ''novi homines'' became more and more rare as some plebeian families became as entrenched in the Senate as their patrician colleagues. By the time of the First Punic War , it was already a sensation that ''novi homines'' were elected in two consecutive years ( Gaius Fundanius Fundulus in 243 BC and Gaius Lutatius Catulus in 242 BC ). In 63 BC , Cicero became the first ''novus homo'' in more than thirty years.Cicero, ''De lege agraria'', describes the interval as ''perlongo intervallo'' and his consulship "almost the first in living memory". In the late Roman Republic period, the distinction between the classes became less important. The consuls came from a new elite, the '' Nobili '' ( Noblemen ), an artificial Aristocracy of all who could demonstrate direct descent in the male line from a consulFirst demonstrated in Matthias Gelzer, ''Die nobilität der römischen Republik'' 1912, correcting Theodor Mommsen 's earlier proposition that all families possessing the '' Ius Imaginum '', that is, descended from Curule Magistrate s, were designated ''nobili''. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, "Nobiles and Novi Reconsidered" ''The American Journal of Philology'' 107.2 (Summer 1986), pp. 255-260, assesses and rejects some apparent exceptions to Gelzer's rule. such families, patrician or plebeian, that had produced a consul tended to reduce the distinction between patricians and plebeians in the late Republic. LIST OF ''NOVI HOMINES''
''TOPOS'' OF THE "NEW MAN" The literary theme of ''Homo novus'', or "how the lowly-born but inherently worthy man may properly rise to eminence in the world" was the '' Topos '' of Seneca 's influential Epistle XLIV, The sources that follow are drawn from R. W. Truman, "Lázaro de Tormes and the "Homo Novus" Tradition" ''The Modern Language Review'' 64.1 (January 1969), pp. 62-67. and— at the endpoint of Late Antiquity — a subject in Boethius ' '' Consolation Of Philosophy '' (iii, vi). In the Middle Ages Dante 's ''Convivio'' (book IV) and Petrarch 's ''De remediis utriusque fortunae'' (I.16; II.5) take up the subject, and Chaucer 's Wife Of Bath's Tale . In its Christian renderings, the theme suggested a tension in the ''scala naturae'' or Great Chain Of Being , one that was produced through the agency of Man's Free Will .C.A. Patrides, "The Scale of nature and Renaissance treatises on nobility" ''Studia Neophilologica'' 36 (1964) pp 63-68. The theme came naturally to , ''De institutionae republicae'' (VI.1), and in Sánchez De Arévalo 's encyclopedic ''Speculum vitae humanae''. In the sixteenth century these and new texts came to be widely printed and distributed. Sánchez de Arévalo's ''Speculum'' was first printed at Rome, 1468, and there are more than twenty Fifteenth-century Printings ; German, French and Spanish translations were printed. Jerónimo Osório Da Fonseca 's ''De nobilitate'' (Lisbon 1542, and seven reprintings in the sixteenth century), stressing ''propria strennuitas'' ("one's own determined striving") received an English translation in 1576. The Roman figure most often cited as an '' Exemplum '' is Gaius Marius , whose speech of self-justification was familiar to readers from the set-piece in Sallust 's ''Bellum Iugurthinum'', 85; the most familiar format in the Renaissance treatises is a Dialogue that contrasts the two sources of nobility, with the evidence weighted in favour of the "new man". NOTES EXTERNAL LINKS FURTHER READING
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