Note 15 — Chapter I · CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH, B.C. 63-44

The patrician gentes were dying out, and it was thought good to replenish their numbers, thus gradually forming a class of nobles distinct from these ennobled by office. In making the Octavii patricians, the initiative was taken by the Senate; in later times, however, the power of creating patricii was conferred on the imperator. Iulius seems also to have done it on his own authority. (Dio, 43, 47; Suet., Aug. 2.)