Social Classes

[Demson]

For my essay, I need to define the different classes in Imperial Roman society.

 

What I need;

1) confirmation that my source (below) is right.

2) Perhaps some pointers to historical Roman m, but I thought I should ask anyway

 

I'm not very informed about this aspect of Roman society. Therefor I am using another essay as source. The question is - is the source right

 

I intend to use direct translations and/or interpretations (like unrv's lawlist) to prove the social classes existed in the Roman Empire. If I can't find enough of these, I'll look for the writings of some credible professor as source. I'm doing the same with Brehon Law. I prefer to use direct proof though. So any pointers would be highly appriciated.

 

Eventually I'll write a summary of my knowledge on Roman laws regarding social classes.

 

Rome was a highly hierarchical society in which different classes or groups had well-defined roles. Historical sources provide far more information about the elite or wealthy people than the poor. Writers of the day generally ignored the stories of those who made up the lower class. Modern historians and archaeologists have tried to reconstruct the lives of ordinary Romans from a variety of sources: occasional references in poems and histories, tombstone inscriptions, and everyday objects that survive from antiquity or that are uncovered in excavations at sites like the ancient cities of Pompeii and Ostia.

 

Elites

 

In Rome the imperial court was the center of aristocratic life with senators, equestrians, and assorted others - like actors and astrologers - eager to impress the emperor and his family. The emperors used ties of patronage, rewarding elites who were loyal with offices and gifts. Senators, equestrians, and other wealthy courtiers had their own dependents who relied on their generosity.

 

The Roman elite had wealth, official position, and prestige. They did not have to work, except to manage their estates. Consequently, they often did public service. They owned large townhouses as well as villas in the countryside. They often held elegant banquets at their homes and served wild game and fish from specially stocked ponds. Aristocrats not only lived better than the poor, but they received privileged treatment from the imperial officials and the courts. Members of the elite could not be tortured or summarily punished, and if they were accused of a crime, the emperor could hear their cases. Even if they were convicted of a capital offense, these men and women could not be crucified, burned alive, or thrown to the beasts, which were the punishments faced by the lower classes. Aristocrats were executed only by the sword.

 

In other cities of the empire, local elites also assumed the traditional responsibilities of holding office, sponsoring games, erecting public buildings, and making charitable contributions. The groups who commanded special respect often varied from place to place. Local aristocratic families, individuals who inherited local priesthoods, or Roman settlers could hold the highest position on the social ladder in different cities, but invariably a hierarchical structure existed.

 

Lower Classes

 

The lower classes included poor citizens, noncitizens, slaves, and former slaves called freedmen. The working masses who toiled with their hands in the fields and towns represented the largest segment of the population during the empire, but not all of the lower classes were manual laborers. Doctors, musicians, actors, teachers, and even philosophers fell into the lower classes, as did craftspeople.

 

Institutions called collegia, which were similar to fraternal lodges in modern society, provided the poor with an alternative community. Some were trade groups or guilds of craftspeople, but most were burial societies that enabled each member to receive a proper funeral. The societies, open to freedmen and slaves alike, had their own officials. Each collegium sought a wealthy patron to contribute to celebratory banquets at religious festivals as well as to provide some legal protection for the members who, in turn, gave respect and prayers to the patron. In a small city, people had opportunities for enrichment that did not exist in the countryside. People could improve their status in the hierarchy by serving in the army or by being successful in trade.

 

Slaves

 

When the Romans conquered the Mediterranean, they took millions of slaves to Italy, where they toiled on the large plantations or in the houses and workplaces of wealthy citizens. The Italian economy depended on abundant slave labor, with slaves constituting 40 percent of the population. Enslaved people with talent, skill, or beauty commanded the highest prices, and many served as singers, scribes, jewelers, bartenders, and even doctors. One slave trained in medicine was worth the price of 50 agricultural slaves.

 

Roman law was inconsistent on slavery. Slaves were considered property; they had no rights and were subject to their owners' whims. However, they had legal standing as witnesses in courtroom proceedings, and they could eventually gain freedom and citizenship. Masters often freed loyal slaves in gratitude for their faithful service, but slaves could also save money to purchase their freedom. Conditions for slaves in Rome gradually improved, although slaves were treated cruelly in the countryside. Some harsh masters believed in the old proverb "Every slave is an enemy," so that while humane legislation prohibited the mutilation or murder of slaves, outrageous cruelty continued.

 

Like the Stoic philosophers, Christians taught the brotherhood of humanity and urged kindness towards slaves, but they did not consider slaves equals in status. For example, Saint Augustine opposed the principle of slavery, but did not see how the practice could be abolished without endangering the social order. Thus he regarded it as another necessary evil resulting from humanity's fall from divine grace. Other bishops were less troubled, and the early Christian church actually acquired its own slaves.

 

Slavery in the Roman Empire did not suddenly end, but it was slowly replaced when new economic forces introduced other forms of cheap labor. During the late empire, Roman farmers and traders were reluctant to pay large amounts of money for slaves because they did not wish to invest in a declining economy. The legal status of "slave" continued for centuries, but slaves were gradually replaced by wage laborers in the towns and by land-bound peasants (later called serfs) in the countryside. These types of workers provided cheap labor without the initial cost that slave owners had to pay for slaves. Slavery did not disappear in Rome because of human reform or religious principle, but because the Romans found another, perhaps even harsher, system of labor.

 

Freedmen

 

The class of people known as freedmen consisted of former slaves who had gained their freedom. Masters became patrons to their freed slaves, who owed them respect and often performed specific duties for them. For example, former slaves often worked for their patrons, selling the produce of the estate.

 

Some imperial freedmen became enormously wealthy; one freedman possessed 4,000 slaves of his own. Freedmen had limited political rights, but they could direct their ambitions to their sons. Roman freedmen did not encounter the racial prejudice that restricted the political and economic progress of the descendants of American slaves. In a single generation, a family might move from slavery to social prominence. In AD 193 Publius Helvius Pertinax, the son of a former slave, became emperor.

 

Women

 

Men wrote nearly all the books during the Roman Empire, so they provide most of the views of women. Most of these ancient sources focus on empresses, princesses, and other aristocratic women and do not shed much light on the condition of ordinary Roman women. Only a few letters and poems actually written by Roman women survive.

 

Roman aristocratic women influenced politics, but they could not serve as magistrates, senators, or military commanders. During the empire, the wives of emperors began to wield more power than women had ever held before. Livia, the wife of Augustus, advised her husband for 51 years of marriage before living her last 15 years under the rule of her son, Tiberius.

 

She was deeply devoted to her husband and family and only appeared in public to display the virtues of a Roman matron, which included chastity, modesty, frugality, loyalty, and dignity. Behind the scenes, Livia and Augustus were extremely close, and she played a part in his important decisions, although some sources unfairly portray her as the evil, manipulative power behind the throne. Roman society accepted senatorial advisors, but invariably regarded women close to power as grasping and devious.

 

Only archaeology provides much material about the lives of lower-class Roman women. Stone carvings and funeral inscriptions show that women worked as nurses, waitresses, midwives, weavers, and food sellers. Women performed other jobs such as jewelry making, leather working, and ceramics alongside their husbands in family businesses, but this type of work was rarely recorded. The brief texts and crude images of working women do not provide much detail about their lives, although there is a similar lack of information about lower-class men.

 

Romans traditionally depicted the ideal woman as a virtuous daughter, brave wife, or devoted mother. Some women were cast into heroic roles in reaction to political persecution; they hid their families, or even followed banished husbands or children into exile. Like men, upper-class women also won praise through public generosity; they built public monuments and temples, subsidized games, and became patrons of their home cities. As a sign of their rank, aristocratic women were given seats with the senators at public games, where they could display fine clothing and jewelry.

 

Women had long played an important role in Roman religion. Vestal virgins, who were priestesses of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, kept the sacred fire burning at Vesta's temple in the Roman Forum. They lived in an elaborate house near the temple and occupied a place of honor at public ceremonies. Some festivals and rites were reserved for women, but these ceremonies were usually private.

 

It is more difficult to assess how women were involved in cultural and intellectual life. Upper-class girls went to elementary school and often learned to read and write. Generally they were not permitted to pursue higher study with men of learning, although Stoic philosophers were sympathetic to women's education. Even without higher education, Nero's mother, known as Agrippina the Younger, wrote a biography of her mother. The empress Julia Domna, wife of emperor Lucius Septimius Severus (193-211), was a patron of learning and served as the primary advisor of her son, Caracalla (211-217), throughout much of his reign as emperor.

 

Roman society had long valued boys above girls. Poor families sometimes abandoned infant daughters in the countryside to avoid paying dowries, the gifts traditionally given by a girl's parents to her husband's family. The practice of allowing baby girls to die, called female infanticide, continued down to the Christian era and had an impact on the size of the female population. Childbearing was dangerous. Tombstones show that the life expectancy of women was 34 years as contrasted with 46 years for men because women often died in childbirth.

 

Some male writers attacked imperial women's education, political power, and sexuality. Roman women did have one kind of real power - the wealth that came from their right to own and inherit property. Despite this wealth and prestige, no Roman woman actually ruled the empire in her own name, although some other countries did have women rulers: Egyptian queen Cleopatra, Queen Boudicca of the Britons, and Zenobia, who reigned over Palmyra in Syria. In Rome, men held political power and women could only exercise indirect power.'

[Primus Pilus]

I'm not sure if Crystal links is a complete reprinting or a rewording of encyclopedic information, but at any rate they used Encyclopedia Britannica as a sole source...

 

Scroll down for the reference info...

 

That doesn't make the information wrong, just encyclopedic... which isn't usually very in depth.

[Demson]

Thanks PP.