It is a relief that there is one magazine in which one will not be hauled up on a charge of libel or sexual harassment for writing that Barack Obama, the President-elect of the United States, is a novus homo. So too was the 1st C BC Roman orator, philosopher and politician Cicero, and he never stopped boasting about it, as well he might – there were only twelve novi homines in the last 300 years of republican Rome.

In strong contrast to our system, Romans sensibly designed their ‘constitution’ to make it impossible for anyone with no background in or experience of politics to reach a position of power. From the earliest days, it was families who were patrician by birth who held the top jobs. This did not last, but only those families that could boast a consul could call themselves nobiles, and in the very nature of things such people ganged together. By Cicero’s time, these ancient families had been in the political game for centuries, inter-marrying and, by ensuring only their ‘friends’ became consul, expanding networks of obligation and entrenching the system yet further.

But that was not all. To ensure that more than blue blood was required, there was also a cursus honorum (‘race for honours’) which required candidates to hold a series of age-related political positions before they could reach the top, the final four being quaestor (30), aedile (36), praetor (39) and finally consul (42). So whoever won the ultimate prize had a thorough grounding in the responsibilities of public service over a wide range of duties – financial, military, judicial and administrative (those who started right at the bottom were i/c Rome’s sewers). All quaestors became members of Rome’s governing body, the Senate, for life.

Once the novus homo had made it, however, he could boast that he had done so not because of old boy networks but because of seriously distinguished achievement. Cicero could do that by pointing to his unmatchable brilliance as a speaker in legal and political causes (one reason he became consul was that the nobiles wanted that astonishing facility on their side). But he was also proud of the fact that he took the four main hurdles at the youngest possible age. So promise was combined with solid experience when he took the prize. And Obama?

Next time: the power and price of rhetoric.

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