Novus homo orhomo novus (lit. 'new man';pl.:novi homines orhomines novi) was the term inancient Rome for a man who was the first in hisfamily to serve in theRoman Senate or, more specifically, to be elected asconsul. When a man entered public life on an unprecedented scale for a high communal office, then the term used wasnovus civis (plural:novi cives) or "new citizen".[1]
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In theEarly Republic, tradition held that both Senate membership and the consulship were restricted topatricians. Whenplebeians gained the right to this office during theConflict of the Orders, all newly elected plebeians were naturallynovi 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 theFirst Punic War, it was already a sensation thatnovi homines were elected consuls in two consecutive years (Gaius Fundanius Fundulus in 243 BC andGaius Lutatius Catulus in 242 BC). In 63 BC,Cicero became the firstnovus homo to be consul in more than thirty years.[2]
By theLate Republic, the distinction between the orders became less important. The consuls came from a new elite, thenobiles (noblemen), an artificialaristocracy of all who could demonstrate direct descent in the male line from a consul.[3]
The literary theme ofhomo novus, or "how the lowly born but inherently worthy man may properly rise to eminence in the world" was thetopos ofSeneca's influential Epistle XLIV.[4] At the endpoint ofLate Antiquity, it was likewise a subject inBoethius'Consolation of Philosophy (iii, vi). In theMiddle AgesDante'sConvivio (book IV) andPetrarch'sDe remediis utriusque fortunae (I.16; II.5) take up the subject, andChaucer's"Wife of Bath's Tale".
In its Christian renderings, the theme suggested a tension in thescala naturae orgreat chain of being, one that was produced through the agency of Man'sfree will.[5]
The theme came naturally toRenaissance humanists who were oftenhomines novi[6] rising by their own wits in a network ofnoble courts that depended on the highly literate new men to run increasingly complicated chancelries and create the cultural propaganda that was a contemporary vehicle for noble fame, and that consequently offered a kind of intellectualcursus honorum. In the fifteenth centuryBuonaccorso da Montemagno'sDialogus de vera nobilitate treated of the "true nobility" inherent in the worthy individual;Poggio Bracciolini also wrote at lengthDe nobilitate, stressing theRenaissance view of human responsibility and effectiveness that are at the heart of Humanism:sicut virtutis ita et nobilitatis sibi quisque existit auctor et opifex.[7]
Briefer summaries of the theme were to be found inFrancesco Patrizi,De institutionae republicae (VI.1), and inRodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo's encyclopedicSpeculum vitae humanae. In the sixteenth century these and new texts came to be widely printed and distributed. Sánchez de Arévalo'sSpeculum was first printed at Rome, 1468, and there are more than twentyfifteenth-century printings; German, French and Spanish translations were printed. The characters ofBaldassare Castiglione'sThe Book of the Courtier (1528) discuss the requirement that acortegiano be noble (I.XIV-XVI). This was translated into French, Spanish, English, Latin and other languages.[8]Jerónimo Osório da Fonseca'sDe nobilitate (Lisbon 1542, and seven reprintings in the sixteenth century), stressingpropria strennuitas ("one's own determined striving") received an English translation in 1576.
The Roman figure most often cited as anexemplum isGaius Marius, whose speech of self-justification was familiar to readers from the set-piece inSallust'sBellum Jugurthinum, 85; the most familiar format in the Renaissance treatises is adialogue that contrasts the two sources of nobility, with the evidence weighted in favor of the "new man".
