Novus homo

Homo novus (or: novus homo, Latin for "new man"; plural homines novi) 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. When a man entered public life on an unprecedented scale for a high communal office, then the term used was novus civis (plural: novi cives) or "new citizen".

In the Early Republic, tradition held that both Senate membership and the consulship were restricted to patricians. When plebeians gained the right to this office during the Conflict of the Orders, all newly elected plebeians were naturally novi homines. With time, novi homines became progressively rarer 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.

By the Late Republic, the distinction between the orders became less important. The consuls came from a new elite, the nobiles (noblemen), an artificial of all who could demonstrate direct descent in the male line from a consul.

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. At the endpoint of Late Antiquity, it was likewise 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.

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