The term novus homo (literally, "new man" in Latin), referred in ancient Roman times to a person who was the first of his family to be serve in the Roman Senate, or, less generally, the first to be elected as consul. According to tradition, both Senate membership and the consulship were restricted to patricians. When plebeians gained the right to this office all the newly elected plebeians were naturally novi homines. As time went by novi homines became more and more rare as certain plebeian families became just as entrenched in the Senate as their patrician colleagues. By the time of the First Punic War it was already a sensation that new men were elected in two consecutive years (Gaius Fundanius Fundulus in 243 BC and Gaius Lutatius Catulus in 242 BC).

In the Late Republic the distinction between the classes became less important. The consuls came from a new elite, the noblemen. "Noblemen" were an artificial aristocracy the Senate's plebeians invented to reduce the distinctian between patricians and plebeians. The nobles were a group of families, patrician or plebeian, that had produced a consul.