Patricians
group · 2 works · 7 mentions · 12 anchored passages
Patrician · patricians · Patrician Assembly · Patrician Burghers · patrician aristocracy · patrician members · patricii · the Patricians
in the texts
Institutes of Roman Law
The privileged class of Roman society with distinct political privileges and customary law, who claimed exclusive membership in the Gentes and monopolized legal knowledge.
The tendency of this aristocracy was to close up its ranks and to assert a monopoly, not only of office, but of knowledge of the forms of law.
The exclusion of the Plebeians from the magistracy and the priesthood, and the denial to them of the right of Conubium with Patricians, may also point in the direction of a fundamental racial distinction between the two classes.
In the Monarchy, however, and even in the early Republic it seems that the system of law was not marked by perfect uniformity, since the two classes of Patricians and Plebeians, which made up the Roman State, appear to have been distinguished, not only by the possession of different political privileges, but also by the possession of different systems of customary law.
Ancient Law
The patrician class of Rome, whose assembly originally controlled testamentary validation.
The Testament to which the pedigree of all modern Wills may be traced is not, however, the Testament executed in the Calata Comitia, but another Testament designed to compete with it and destined to supersede it.
When the Testamentary power first discloses itself to us in legal history, there are signs that, like almost all the great Roman institutions, it was the subject of contention between the Patricians and the Plebeians.
We have it stated on abundant authority that Testaments during the primitive period of the Roman State were executed in the Comitia Calata, that is, in the Comitia Curiata, or Parliament of the Patrician Burghers of Rome, when assembled for Private Business.