Several plebeian gentes are mentioned, including the Minucia and the Octavia,[154] the Lutatia,[155] the Calpurnia,[156] the Domitia,[157] the Fonteia,[158] the Aurelia,[159] and the Licinia.[160] Some gentes comprised both patrician and plebeian families, as the Cassia,[161] the Claudia,[162] the Cornelia,[163] the Manlia,[164] the Papiria,[165] the Publilia or Poplilia,[166] the Aebutia,[167] and the Servilia.[168] Not only do the sources refer to several plebeian gentes by name, but they clearly imply in other ways the existence of such associations. Livy[169] expresses the patrician sentiment that “it would seem an affront to the gods for honors to be vulgarized and for the distinction between gentes to be confused at auspicated comitia” (by the election of plebeians to the consular tribunate). “The distinction between gentes” can only mean the distinction between patrician and plebeian gentes—an interpretation confirmed by a similar statement of Cicero[170] to Clodius, who had passed by arrogation from a patrician to a plebeian gens: “You have disturbed the sacra and contaminated the gentes, both the one you have deserted and the one you have defiled” (by your admission into it). To our other proofs we may add the consideration that the very expression gentes patriciae[171] implies the existence of plebeian gentes. It is natural then that Varro[172] should make gentilitas a condition of men in general. In asserting that there were a thousand gentile names the same authority[173] must have included those of plebeians, for scarcely a hundred belonging to patricians could have been known to him. By no means the weakest argument in favor of the view here presented is the fact that the laws of the Twelve Tables concerning inheritance, tutelage,[174] etc.—which apply not to the patricians alone but to the whole citizen body—assume that every citizen in full possession of his civil rights belonged to a gens. A passage often interpreted against the existence of plebeian gentes is Livy x. 8. 9: “Vos solos gentem habere.” In this case a plebeian speaker says the patricians claim that they alone have gens (not gentes). The context shows clearly, however, that gens does not here denote an association but is used in the sense of illustrious birth or pedigree,[175] as is sometimes our word family.[176] Wherever a nobility exists it necessarily lays greater stress on descent than do the people, and in all countries the nobles are in a far better position to keep up family connections than are the commons. Naturally therefore at Rome we hear more of patrician than of plebeian gentes. But in view of all the facts mentioned above there should be no doubt as to the existence of the latter. The result of this discussion is that neither in the composition of the gens nor in its position in the community can support be found for Niebuhr’s assumption of a patrician state.[177]