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Rome knew four classes of people. This division was very important to the Romans. The lowest class were the slaves. They were owned by other people. They had no rights at all.
The next class were the plebeians. They were free people. But they had little say at all. The second highest class were the equestrians (sometimes they are called the 'knights'). Their name means the 'riders', as they were given a horse to ride if they were called to fight for Rome. To be an equestrian you had to be rich. The highest class were the nobles of Rome. They were called 'patricians'. All the real power in Rome lay with them.
The Roman Republic was a very successful government. It lasted from 510 BC until 23 BC - almost 500 years.
Patricians
Wealthy influential landowning families
The patricians were the upper class of Rome. Two Latin terms are used to designate them, patres and patricii. Where ? exactly they come from is not known, but many people have theorized about it and repeated what traditions claim. Here ? you'll read about a few of these ideas.
Patricians may have originally been relatives of the patres 'fathers', the heads of the families of the old tribes of ?
Rome. Patres could refer to members of the senate, since during the Republic, the senators were referred to as patres et conscripti 'conscript (and) fathers,' whether or not they were patricians.
On the other hand, Patres sometimes referred not to the senate but to patricians.
Staveley says that traditionalists have no sense of confusion. "For them the original Senate of Romulus, which derived its collective title patres from the fact of its being an assembly of patres familiae, was itself all-patrician." The plebeian element of the Senate was found in the conscripti, as distinct from the patres. Patres et conscripti may have later been used to distinguish the senators created in the regal period from ones added later or it may have distinguished hereditary senators from non-hereditary ones in the Regal period. However, the term patricii also designates the hereditary senators.
The Old Tribes
The old patricians were thought to have been divided into 3 tribes, Tities, Luceres, and Ramnes. Each tribe consisted of 10 curiae. Patricians lost privileges over time, but patrician status and parentage remained necessary for the confarreatio type of marriages, ceremonial positions, and ancient priestly functions, including the vestal virgins.
The patricians as a group are sometimes referred to as the patriciate.
Equestrians
Wealthy property owners who chose business over politics
Equites were Roman horsemen or knights. The name is derived from the Latin for horse, equus. The equites came to be a social class. A single member of the equestrian class was called an eques.
Origins:
Originally, there were supposed to have been 300 equites during the time of Romulus. 100 were taken from each of the three tribes Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres. Each of these patrician hundreds was a century (centuria) and each century was named for its tribe. They were called "celeres." Under Tullus Hostilius there were six centuries. By the time of Servius Tullius there were 18 centuries, the last twelve drawn from the richest, but not necessarily patrician, men.
Development:
The equites were originally an important division of the Roman army, but over time, they lost their military prominence moving to the wings of the phalanx. They still voted first in the comitia and kept two horses and a groom each -- more than any others in the army. When the Roman army started to receive pay, the equites received three times that of the ordinary troops. After Punic War II the equites lost their military position.
Service:
An eques was bound to a certain number of campaigns, but no more than ten. Upon completion they entered the first class.
Later Equites:
Later Equites had the right to sit on juries and came to occupy an important third place in Roman policies and politics, standing between the senatorial class and the people.
Disgrace and Dismissal:
When an eques was deemed unworthy, he was told to sell his horse (vende equum). When no disgrace was involved, someone no longer fit would be told to lead his horse on. There was a waiting list to replace the dismissed eques.
Plebeians
Working class. Men without substantial wealth who worked for their living at jobs such as artisans, craftsmen, bakers etc
Today, the term plebeian is synonymous with lower class. In early Rome, the plebeians (also known simply as plebs) may
have been that part of the Roman population whose origin was among the conquered Latins (as opposed to the Roman conquerors). Plebeians were contrasted with the patrician nobility. In the period of the early Roman Republic, membership in the Senate may have been denied to the plebeians, and restricted to the patricians. Since the ruling body of the Senate was more interested in itself than others, the plebeians suffered. Over time the plebeians were able to amass wealth and great power. By the time of Caesar, the patrician Claudius chose to become a plebeian (something he could do through adoption) in order to hold an important political office, the Tribune of the Plebs.
Freed Slaves
Slaves who had either been given their freedom or had paid for their freedom and now worked for their living.
Slaves
Generally prisoners of war but sometimes abandoned children who were owned by their master
Social Classes in the Late Republic
Rome was a highly hierarchial and class-conscious society, but there was the possibility of mobility between most classes because by the second century BCE class was no longer determined solely by birth. The classes described below superseded the old patrician/plebeian distinction, though certain elements of dress and religious positions and rituals were still reserved for patricians.There was a large gulf between the wealthy upper classes , and the poorer lower classes, though it was still possible—although quite difficult—to move upwards by acquiring sufficient wealth.
Upper Classes
Senatorial class (senatores): The basis for this class was political. It included all men who served in the Senate, and by extension their families. This class was dominated by the nobles (nobiles), families whose ancestors included at leastone consul (earlier the qualification had been a curule magistracy, i.e. curule aedile and up). The first man in his family to be elected consul, thus qualifying his family for noble status, was called a “new man” (novus homo), although
this term was used in varying senses—it could refer to an equesterian who was the first in his family to be elected to political office and thus join the senatorial class, or to a man from the senatorial class who was the first in his family ?
to be elected consul and thus join the nobles, or most dramatically to an equestrian like Cicero who was elected consul. Senators had to prove that they had property worth at least 1,000,000 sesterces; there was no salary attached to service in the Senate, and senators were prohibited from engaging personally in nonagricultural business, trade or public contracts. Men of the senatorial class wore the tunic with broad stripes (laticlavi).
Equestrian class (equites): The basis for this class was economic. A man could be formally enrolled in the equestrian order if he could prove that he possessed a stable minimum amount of wealth (property worth at least 400,000 sesterces); by extension his family members were also considered equestrians. However, if an equestrian was elected to a magistracy and entered the Senate, he moved up to the senatorial class; this was not particularly easy or frequent. Equestrians were primarily involved in the types of business prohibited to senators. Equestrians wore the tunic with narrow stripes
Women: Although membership in these classes was dominated by the same families over many generations, the classes themselves were defined according to male activities rather than birth. Women's place in these classes was therefore somewhat problematic. However, there came to be a customary acceptance that women belonged to the social class of their fathers and then of their husbands, although the women had no special dress that distinguished their status. This female participation in social status began to crystallize and formalize under Augustus, who explicitly included the daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters of senators in his law prohibiting members of the senatorial class from contracting legal marriages with freed people.
Belonging to one of these upper classes had many significant consequences for Romans besides prestige, for social class determined one's economic and political opportunities, as well as legal rights, benefits and penalties. Rome had nothing comparable to our middle class; the gulf between these two upper classes and the much larger lower classes was immense. However, as long as one was a freeborn Roman citizen there was at least a slight possibility of moving into the equestrian class through the acquisition of wealth. Entry into the senatorial class, even for wealthy equestrians, was extremely difficult, since for centuries a small number of elite families had monopolized this class.
Lower Classes
Commons (plebs or vulgus): all other freeborn Roman citizens. The special mark of dress for citizen males was the toga. All Roman citizens had conubium, the right to contract a legal marriage with another Roman citizen and beget legitimate children who were themselves Roman citizens.
Latins (Latini): freeborn residents of Italy (until 89 BCE, when they were all granted full citizenship) and of certain other Roman municipalities who had some legal rights but were not full Roman citizens. Former slaves who had been informally freed by Roman citizens were a special category, “Junian Latins.”
Foreigners (peregrini): all other freeborn men and women who lived in Roman territories. In 212 CE most freeborn people living within the Roman empire were granted Roman citizenship.
Freed people (liberti or libertini): men and women who had been slaves but had bought their freedom or been manumitted. They were not fully free because they had various restrictions on their rights and owed certain duties to their former masters, who now became their patrons, but they could become citizens if their former masters were citizens and they had been formally manumitted; they were not, however, eligible for public office. This was the one class it was not possible to leave, though the class encompassed only one generation. The next generation, their freeborn children, became full citizens ( members of the commons, though there was a social stigma attached to being a freedman's son) and could even become equestrians if rich enough. Freed people had low social status, and most were probably fairly poor, but it was possible for them to achieve some success in a trade, and a few might even become wealthy. They had no special distinction of dress, though their names indicated their status as freed people.
Slaves (servi): system of chattel slavery where human beings were born into slavery or sold into slavery through war or piracy. Slaves were the property of their owners by law, but by custom some slaves (especially urban, domestic slaves) might be allowed their own savings (peculium) with which they might later buy their freedom, or their masters could manumit them, so some mobility into the previous class was possible. . Roman slavery was not racially based, and slaves had no special distinction of dress, though slaves who had run away were sometimes made to wear metal collars with inscriptions such as the following: “I have run away. Capture me. When you have returned me to my master, Zoninus, you will receive a reward.”
Women: Since the lower classes were not defined by male activities, there was no problem with including women; female and male children were automatically members of the social class of their parents (except for freedpeople, since only one generation could be “freed”). If the parents were Roman citizens and had contracted a legal Roman marriage, the children followed the social status of their father ( they were Roman citizens). However, in the case of Latins, foreigners, and slaves, children took the social status of their mother, even if their father was a freeborn Roman citizen.
