The Social Classes
The Social Classes
Roman Class Distinctions. The Romans never shied away from grouping themselves—and others—into social classes. While the origins and motivations for the oldest classes remain obscure, historical sources reveal how the classes shifted, disappeared, and were invented over the centuries. The change and growth of Rome brought about many realignments of classes. The conservatism of the Romans and the Roman elite, by contrast, tended to retard changes among the social classes and retain class designations well after they had much purpose. Class distinctions tended to be functional, practical, and measure social worth rather than derive from beliefs about race, biology, or philosophy. Ultimately, since class distinctions affected the quality of life, respect, and power of the individuals belonging to a particular class, members of the different classes would come into conflict with other classes. The Romans themselves would even associate the history of their culture with the actions of particular classes.
Class-Structure of Early Rome. During the early days of Rome, when it was a city-state headed by a king, class divisions that would become important later in history were just developing. At the earliest stages, the privileged class was referred to as the patricians. The patricians controlled the religious and political offices of the city. The rest of the citizens were by default the plebeians. These two classes became fixed and hereditary for centuries. The only slavery mentioned during this period is debt bondage (for example, citizens under the dominion of someone to whom they owed a financial debt). The origins of the Senate also seem to reach back to this earliest period, though little can be known for certain. The Senate was probably an advisory council to the king. Both patricians and plebeians could belong to the Senate at this time. Roman legend told that the founder of Rome, Romulus, had founded the Senate with one hundred members and later increased it to three hundred, but scholars today doubt this report.
Conflict of the Orders during the Republic. After the last king was expelled, Rome officially became a republic. The duties of the king fell to a new office, that of consul, two of whom served at any time and only for a year. The Senate, however, accumulated the most power during this period, as well as came increasingly under control of the patricians. The distinction between patrician and plebeian also became sharper, which fueled a conflict called the Conflict of the Orders. This struggle continued intermittently for more than two hundred years while Rome grew as a military power in the region. As the patricians solidified their control over Rome and enjoyed the benefits of an aristocracy, the plebeians organized themselves to defend their own rights and interests.
Early Organization and Secession of the Plebeians. The conflict between the patricians and plebeians seems to have started within decades of the foundation of the Republic. With the patricians in control of the government through the Senate and public magistracies, the plebeians needed other means to assert their power. They organized themselves as a political body and elected their own leaders at their own assemblies (called the comitia plebis). Their first priority was to make the patricians recognize the leaders the plebeians had elected for themselves. The plebeians chose two types of officials, tribunes and aediles. The tribunes had the task of leading the plebs and pursuing the needs and wishes of the order. Aediles were originally temple officials (Latin aedes “building”), but they started to judge disputes in commerce and served as general support for the tribunes. These officials were sacrosanct, which meant that the plebeian assembly had sworn to defend and protect the men in office from harm if the patricians attempted to arrest or threaten them. It was of primary importance, then, for the patricians to recognize and respect these officials. The Roman military depended on the participation of plebeians, and this military importance proved to be a bargaining weapon. The plebeians threatened to withdraw from Rome (Latin secessio) and thus take their military force away, too. The first secession eventually compelled the patricians to recognize the plebeian tribunes in 471 B.C.E.
The Second Secession and the Twelve Tables. The early to middle years of the fifth century brought economically hard times for Rome. The plebeians wanted codification of the laws to prevent arbitrary abuse of authority by patrician officials. Plebeian tribunes began pushing for a written legal code, and, finally in 451 B.C.E., a decemvirate (board of ten men) consisting entirely of patricians convened to draft a legal code. They completed ten tables of laws, and then a second commission, including five plebeians, met to continue the work. Controversy broke out, however, when the patrician members, led by Appius Claudius, tried to force through the ratification of two additional tables of harsh laws considered oppressive to the plebs. The plebeians protested and seceded again. Eventually, constitutional order was restored, and a new slate of tribunes and consuls put in place. Difficulty surrounds the Romans’ own historical accounts of the creation of the Twelve Tables, and some parts were quickly repealed (such as the ban on intermarriage between patrician and plebeian), but in the long run the Tables were a breakthrough. The Twelve Tables (mostly lost to scholars today) provided the foundation for the Roman legal system until the end of the empire (and the Roman legal code in turn has influenced legal systems all over the world). Gradually, over the remaining decades of the fifth century, the plebeians maintained their established institutions, gained certain legal rights, and acquired access to some magistracies. The patricians retained the greater power, however, through the Senate, assemblies, and religious offices.
FEEDING THE STOMACH
The Roman historian Livy provides a dramatic account of the first secession of the plebs. When the plebeians had withdrawn and thus threatened the military stability of Rome, fear gripped the patricians. A man named Menenius Agrippa, himself a plebeian, was sent to address the crowd. He used a famous parable to convince the seceding plebeians that it was best to negotiate an agreement for the good of Rome as a whole:
There was a time when everything in the human body did not, as they do now, work together, but each part had its own ideas for itself and its own way of expressing them. The other parts resented that their own stress, efforts, and service should go to providing everything for the stomach, while the stomach sat in the middle of all this, with nothing to do but enjoy all the pleasures given to it. So they swore that the hand should carry no food to the mouth, that the mouth should take nothing that was offered, and that the teeth should not chew. In their anger, while they intended to subdue the belly by starvation, they themselves and the whole body nearly wasted entirely away. Hence it became clear that the belly, too, has no lazy job to perform: it is no more nourished than it nourishes, returning back to all parts of the body—distributing it fairly through the veins once the food is digested—that very thing upon which our life and health depend, blood.
Agrippa explained how the anger of the plebs paralleled the internal rebellion of the body. His speech persuaded the plebeians to negotiate, and as a result of these negotiations the first tribunes were recognized, who would represent and protect the plebs.
Source: Livy, translated by B. O. Foster and others, Loeb Classical Library, fifteen volumes (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1919-1967).
Continued Class Conflict and the Lex Hortensia. Economic difficulties, especially following the costly wars Rome engaged in, continued to fuel the conflict between the patricians and plebeians. Over the course of the fourth and early third centuries B.C.E., the plebeians won a series of legal and political battles to gain ground with the patricians. Two victories stand out. The plebeians finally won the right to be elected as one of the two annual consuls, the most powerful of the individual magistracies. The lex Hortensia was passed in 287 B.C.E. after the final secession, and gave the resolutions (plebiscita) of the concilium plebis (assembly of the plebs) the full force of a law (lex), binding all citizens including the patricians. The lex Hortensia traditionally marks the end of the Conflict of the Orders.
Isolationism. The end of the Conflict of Orders did not, however, mean democratic equality. The reforms served the interests of the wealthier component of the plebeians, while the entire class of plebeians included many much poorer members. The Romans continued to take control of the Italian peninsula militarily and refine their internal political system. During this process, the Romans remained economically and socially conservative. With their military conquests, they engaged in the slave trade enough that they taxed the process of manumitting slaves, but they do not seem to have substantially incorporated slaves into the city or the workforce until later. Indeed, economically, Rome lagged behind some of the other cities that they had conquered in Italy.
The Nobiles. The plebs had struggled long and hard for equal political rights with the class of patricians. By the close of the third century B.C.E., when the Conflict of the Orders was effectively over, it became possible for a “new man” (novus homo) to join the ranks of the elite by gaining admission to high office and to the Roman senate. Wealthy plebeians took advantage of this new opportunity, and their ranks began to fill the Senate, but over the next two hundred years these few plebeians closed ranks as much as the patricians had before them. The families who constituted this new aristocracy were known as the nobiles (“nobles”).
The Senatorial Class in the Republic. After the abolition of the monarchy in 509 B.C.E., the Senate arose as the dominant authority in Republican Rome. Once a man was admitted to the Senate, he remained a member for life. Moreover, many members had experience in public office, so the Senate as a political body became a knowledgeable and powerful entity. Membership in the Senate was the measuring stick of power in the Republic and the power of the Senate was identified with the security of the Republic itself. Through the Conflict of the Orders and the realignment of the aristocracy, the Senate guided the Roman state through the stunning conquests of Italy and the entire Mediterranean region by the end of the second century B.C.E. By virtue of the enormous influence and prestige of the Senate, the senators constituted a class from this time onward in Roman history.
Patrons and Clients. The system of patronage during the days of the Republic served as the mechanism for organizing alliances and maintaining clear hierarchies in daily business. Patronage operated when an individual sought a wealthier, more educated, or more powerful individual for advice, protection, or assistance. The person seeking assistance was the cliens and the one from whom he sought help was the patronus. In accepting the patron’s help, the client became bound to reciprocate at the patron’s command. The system was complex and pervasive in Roman public life. The patron acquired power and prestige through the number and standing of clients he held. The client in turn gained access to the means and favor of a more powerful patron. The ritual of salutatio openly demonstrated the phenomenon. A patron would begin the day by greeting, dispatching, or listening to the various clients who had gathered at his home. This patron could in turn be a client of a still more powerful patron. The patrons competed with one another in terms of the clients they maintained. Patronage could also continue across generations. While patron and client were not legal distinctions, a patron might expect a client to support him in court or in a campaign for office.
Sources
M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).
Allen M. Ward, Fritz M. Heichelheim, and Cedric A. Yeo, A History of the Roman People, third edition (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice- Hall, 1999).