(patricii, from pater, a father) was the name given among the Romans to the original gentes, of which the populus Romanus was composed, or to their descendants by blood or adoption. Patricii and patres were originally convertible terms, and have essentially the same meaning. During the period of Roman history extending from the building of the city to the formation of the plebs as a distinct order of citizenship, Niebuhr has satisfactorily shown that the patricians and the populus Romanus were in point of fact identical. The earlier inhabitants of the places occupied by the sovereign people were reduced to a state of servitude, and are known by the names aliens and plebs; but the conquering race were all regarded as patricians or burgheers, from whom a select body of senators was chosen as their representatives. The amalgamation of the Latins, Sabine, and Etruscan tribes gradually gave rise to the distinction of patres majorum gentium and patres minorum gentium, the latter epithet being employed to designate those recently elevated to a rank of equality with the old privileged patrician class forming the populus Romanus. The one class was created by Romulus, the other by Tarquinius Priscus. During this period every Roman citizen was a patrician, and, in contrast with the client beneath him, an aristocrat.

The aristocracy was not certainly exclusive in those days, when every citizen could claim the honour; but in the succeeding period, daring from the creation of the plebeian order to the reign of Constantine, the patricians became a genuine aristocracy of birth. The sovereign people no longer consisted exclusively of the patricians, but of the populus (or patricians) and the plebs. In course of time, however, this distinction well nigh ceased; and the term populus came to denote the entire body of Roman citizens, including both patricians and plebeians. During the reign, again, of the Antonines, the patricians were not included under the populus, but formed an exclusive aristocratic class, which no power could degrade to the plebeian level, except the free-will of the patrician himself. The first centuries of this period witnessed a constant struggle for ascendancy between the patricians and plebeians. The former class strove to monopolize all the great offices, both civil and religious, of the nation. In this they generally succeeded; but the upshot of the contest was the establishment of the political equality of the two rival orders, and the consequent partition of the political and religious honours of the state.

From the reign of Constantine downwards, the patrician dignity ceased to be hereditary, and became an exclusively personal distinction, bestowed irrespectively on those individuals who had done the emperor or the empire good service. Old Roman families could claim no share, as such, in the new patrician dignity created at Constantinople. It elevated the individuals honoured with it to the highest rank in the state next to the consuls; and, unlike the old Roman order, the modern patricians were distinguished from the ordinary citizens by their dress and equipage. The honour was not hereditary, however, and was but rarely bestowed by the emperors.

In this, as in other matters, the Popes, when they came to power, imitated the imperial right of temporal sovereigns in bestowing the patrician rank on persons deemed worthy of the distinction. In several European kingdoms also the sovereigns imitated the ancient custom of honouring certain distinguished subjects with the title of patricius. In certain parts of Italy, the term patricius is still applied to the hereditary nobility. (See Niebuhr's History of Rome, vol. ii.; Becker's Handbuch der Röm. Alterth., vol. ii.; Erich und Gruber's Encyclopädie, v. "Patricier;" Smith's Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Antiquities; and Adam's Roman Antiquities.)