nobiles

The nobiles ( nobilis, ) were members of a social rank in the Roman Republic indicating that one was "well known". This may have changed over time: in Cicero's time, one was notable if one descended from a person who had been elected consul. In earlier periods and more broadly, this may have included a larger group consisting of those who were patricians, were descended from patricians who had become plebeians via transitio ad plebem, or were descended from plebeians who had held curule offices.

==History== The nobiles emerged after the Conflict of the Orders established legal equality between patricians and plebeians, allowing plebeians to hold all the magistracies; the state of being "known" was connected to the nobiless rights to funeral masks () and actors in aristocratic funeral processions. However, the term is largely unattested to in the middle Republic, having been introduced in the late Republic as a description rather than a status. Earning such a mask required holding one of the qualifying curule magistracies.