Following the verdict, rumors were circulating among Rome's proletariat and their patrician sympathizers that the rich Cicero had bribed the poor judge.
He was charitable and this extended in particular to providing financial aid to old impoverished Roman families from the patrician and equestrian classes.
One of Banville's best-known novels, The Book of Evidence, is narrated by a patrician loafer named Freddie Montgomery, who gets into financial trouble while living abroad.
For its part, the Senatorial optimates chose one of the consuls for eighty seven BC, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a patrician and once Marius's trusted lieutenant.
Paul's attention came at last to a tall blonde woman, green-eyed, a face of patrician beauty, classic in its hauteur, untouched by tears, completely undefeated.
According to the almighty mos maiorum, the patrician class's relationship to the plebeians was analogous to the power of the pater familias over his wife and children.