But, apart from these minor benefits, the mass of the Plebeians did not share to any very large extent in the triumph of their order. The true reason of the individual Roman being thus thrust into the background can only be given by a review of the causes, soon to be treated, which moulded both the theory and practice of the developed Roman constitution. It must suffice here to trace the painfully inadequate results which were secured by these centuries of agitation by a glance at the distribution of power in the Roman state, at the date of the war with Pyrrhus, or the outbreak of the struggle with Carthage. The old nobility had relaxed its exclusive hold of office, but only to give room for the still firmer grasp of a new. This was an aristocracy of mixed origin, composed indifferently of the leading patrician and plebeian families. The test of _nobilitas_ was the capacity to point to ancestors who had held office which carried with it the right to sit on the curule chair. Its outward sign was the possession of the so-called _jus imaginum_. The _imagines_ themselves were portrait-masks in wax, modelled from the face of the dead, and their primary use was for the purpose of funeral ceremonies. The original was moulded to be placed on the face of the deceased, and so to perpetuate his life in another world; but a copy was kept to give verisimilitude to his fictitious resurrection, which the burial of one of his descendants demanded. At such funerals actors were hired to represent the mighty dead; they wore their _imagines_, and were adorned with the insignia of the offices which these had filled in life, with the _toga praetexta_ of the consul or praetor, the purple robe or the _toga picta_ of the censor, and they sat on curule chairs round the Forum to listen to the orator who reminded them of their own great deeds.[498] As such a public funeral in the Forum was a concession of the state, the prospective right of having one’s mask exhibited, which constituted the _jus imaginum_, was a strictly legal privilege. It was possessed by all those who had been in possession of the _toga praetexta_ and the _sella curulis_[499]—the dictator, master of the horse, consul, censor, praetor, and curule aedile. But, even apart from the occasions of such solemn mummery, the _imago_ was a sign of the rank of its possessor. When not funereally employed it was suspended on a bust in the wings of the central hall (_atrium_) of the noble’s house. Beneath each portrait ran an inscription (_titulus_ or _elogium_), which gave the names and deeds of the person represented. The portraits were joined by lines along the walls which showed the _stemma_ or family tree. It is possible that this display in the _atrium_ was looked on as a public exhibition, and it may originally have been limited by law; but in later times it seems best to conclude that the funerary exhibition alone was the subject of the specific _jus_.[500] But this outward token