Declaration Concerning Patricianship
Sarna News
The Declaration Concerning Patricianship was Marian Hegemony policy that made membership in the patrician class strictly hereditary.[1]
Overview[edit]
The inhabitants of the Marian Hegemony Periphery nation fell into three classes: patrician, pleb, and slave. Class was passed from parent to child unless steps were taken to change it. For the first few decades after the Hegemony's inception in 2920, patricians were those who owned land and wealthy plebs could become patricians by buying land. By the start of the thirty-first century, however, all viable real estate in the Hegemony had been bought and developed, which allowed for virtually no upward movement. There were extreme cases such as Vanora Lindell who purchased two square meters of unusable land to legally grant patrician status, but generally this was not an option for most plebs because such land buys offered no income in which to sustain the patrician lifestyle.[1]
Imperator Marius O'Reilly recognized this reality when he authored the Declaration Concerning Patricianship that officially made patrician membership strictly hereditary. It passed by a fifty-one percent vote in the Senate in 3013.[1]
Following the Hegemony's conquering of the Lothian League in 3055[2] and the Illyrian Palatinate in 3063,[3] Caesar Julius O'Reilly nullified the declaration in 3064 as pleb citizens were now able to buy land in those two provinces.[1]