About the Claudii and Clodii: I have never read anywhere that the Clodii were a plebeian branch of this patrician family. A family was either patrician or plebeian. This was a matter of birth. No one could strip these families from their nobility factor, as it were. It is true, though, that some Claudii spelled their family name according to the way it was pronounced by the people (i.e. the plebs), so: Clodius instead of Claudius. These Clodii were prone to marry plebeian women, but these plebeians were from families that were richer and more powerful than many patrician families, but just weren't part of the original rural Roman nobility. P. Clodius Pulcher was a member of the Populares faction in Roman republican politics.
Can anyone point out a specific place in ancient historical writings or a theory in ancient historical studies regarding this issue?