Marcia gens

Gaius Marcius Coriolanus reproached by his mother, Veturia, and wife, Volumnia, before the walls of Rome.

The gens Marcia, occasionally written Martia, was one of the oldest and noblest houses at ancient Rome. They claimed descent from the second and fourth Roman Kings, and the first of the Marcii appearing in the history of the Republic would seem to have been patrician; but all of the families of the Marcii known in the later Republic were plebeian. The first to obtain the consulship was Gaius Marcius Rutilus in 357 BC, only a few years after the passage of the lex Licinia Sextia opened this office to the plebeians.[1]

  1. ^ Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. II, p. 940 ("Marcia Gens").