THE ANCESTOR gentilicia funera were followed by the smoke-begrimed effigies of the deceased person's ancestors. In some of the gentes ancient tribal customs were also observed, for Pliny quotes from Varro a statement that in the family of the Serani (Attilian gens) gentilicium est feminas linea veste non uti (Pliny, 19, i, 2). The Comitia Curiata^ of which all the constituents were originally patreSy had from the earliest times the power of co- opting an alien gens or a plebeian stirps into the patrician order on the proposal of a magistrate (apparently the praetor), and this might also be done by the king, though probably not without the consent of the patres. The Octavii were so ennobled by Servius TuUius in the sixth century B.C. Under the republic the creation of fresh patrician gentes is said to have ceased, because there was no political assembly composed exclusively of members who fulfilled all the conditions of gentiles ; but it appears that the senatus and populus sometimes conferred the rank of patrician, as in the case of Appius Claudius and his gens and of Domitius Ahenobarbus. Such admissions must have been very rare, for towards the end of the republic the patrician order was rapidly becoming extinct, and not more than fifty families were still existing. Just as in England the older class of ' eorls ' was merged in a new nobility of office, so at Rome the place of the patricians is taken by the nobileSy or families whose ancestors have held Curule magistracies. The conferring of the patriciate was revived by Caesar in his dicta- torship, the power being obtained by a vote of the populace. In later times the elevation of gentes and the grant of the per- sonal title of patricius became a privilege of the emperors, and Pliny in the sixth book of his letters speaks of the upstarts, who by imperial favour or influence at Court have been raised in rank, and have laid the foundations ingentium splendidarumque gentilitatum, Livy ^ describes how in B.C. 445 the Bill de Conubio^ which repealed the denial in the eleventh table of intermarriage be- tween patricians and plebeians, was opposed by the former, on the ground that their blood would be contaminated and their jura gentium confounded. Even before the passing of this Act, some patrician gentes contained plebeian families or stirpes^ descended it is supposed from gentiles who had married outside the limits of their order. We find that gentile inheritances were shared by the plebeian Minucii and gentile sepulchres by 1 4, I, I.
