Dictator, Magister Equitum, Consul, Interrex, Praetor, or Curule Aedile.

These nobles possessed the right to place in their hall, or carry in funeral processions, a wax mask of this ancestor, and also of any other member of the family who had held a curule office.
A plebeian who first held this office was called a _novus homo_, or "new man." The Senate, thus made up of patricians and nobles, had at this time the monopoly of power.

Legally, however, it had no positive authority.
The right of the people to govern was still valid, and there was only wanting a magistrate with the courage to remind them of their legal rights, and urge the exercise of them.
Such a magistrate was found in TIBERIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS.

With him was ushered in the contest which lasted for more than a century, and brought to the surface some of the proudest names of Roman history.
On one side or the other we find them,--MARIUS and SULLA, CAESAR and POMPEY, AUGUSTUS and ANTONY--arraying Rome against herself, until the glories of the Republic were swallowed up in the misrule and dishonor of the Empire.
Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus the elder (see Chapter XX.) belonged to the nobility, but not to the aristocracy.

He married CORNELIA, the daughter of Africanus the elder.