For the first several decades of the Republic, it is not entirely certain which gentes were considered patrician and which plebeian. However, a series of laws promulgated in 451 and 450 BC as the Twelve Tables attempted to codify a rigid distinction between the classes, formally excluding the plebeians from holding any of the major magistracies from that time until the passage of the Lex Licinia Sextia in 367 BC. The law forbidding the intermarriage of patricians and plebeians was repealed after only a few years, by the Lex Canuleia in 445 BC.[1][2]