Well if you go back to the Gracchi, they dropped their patrician status in favour of being plebian in order to hold the office of tribune
and that was a hundred years before the end of the Republic. What really done for the Patrician class were all the land and wealth grab proscriptions by Sulla and the like. They invariably ended up murdering the majority of Patricians as they were the ones with the wealth, so they ran out of numbers eventually. So enters your novus homo, Cicero didn't do so bad ' defender of the Republic'. *could go on*and on* something about Marius.....
( Light In Chains maker of the ikea sofa, Wed 2 Mar 2011, 15:16, Reply)