THE ELITE OF THE ROMAN EMPiitEemperors, senators, equestrians, and the local elite of magistrates, town councilors, and priests - produced almost all the literature and extraordinary material culture which is commonly spoken of as ‘Roman.’ As a result, treatment of 'Roman’ normally means applying the mind world and culture of the elite to a description of the entire Roman population, as when people write and speak of ‘Roman civilization’ or ‘Roman attitudes toward women.’ Here I move away from that habit and focus rather on the ordinary men, people below and generally invisible to those high in the social pyramid. By ‘ordinary men’ I mean every free person below the elite and above the poor day-laborer or peasant. Their outlook, seen through their own eyes, reveals a rich mosaic of attitudes and actions as they live their lives outside the blinkered view of the empire’s aristocracies. Although their mind world is the same as the elite’s in some basic ways - they were both part of the same overarching culture, after all - outlooks and attitudes in general differ significantly.
The imperial elite stood at the top of the Roman socioeconomic pyramid. To qualify, a person had to be worth over 400,000 sesterces (equestrian) or over 1 million sesterces (senatorial). Among the approximately 50-60 million people in the Roman Empire, there were perhaps 5000 adult men possessing such extreme wealth. Beneath (but mostly far beneath) these were the elite of the local towns of the empire. An average of 100 or 125 adult males in each of the 250 or 300 towns of the empire that rose above the level of village would produce another 30,000 to 35,000 very wealthy persons. Because of the steep socioeconomic gradation of the Roman world, these elite together probably held 80 percent or more of the total wealth. The Romans themselves recognized this break in socioeconomic situation between elite and nonelite by calling the super-wealthy honestiores (‘more honorable ones’) and all the rest of the free persons humiliores (‘lesser beings’). This ‘all the rest’ was 99.5 percent of the population.
Below these super-wealthy were a fair number of persons who had many fewer resources in comparison to the very rich, but resources sufficient, at the lower end, to be fairly certain of their daily bread and, on the upper end, to enjoy a lifestyle that allowed enough leisure to pursue some social, political, and cultural interests. These were the more modest
Landowners, the merchants and artisans, successful soldiers, and those financed by these groups and by the elites (professional teachers, doctors, architects, and so on). These men and their families numbered perhaps 25 percent of the total population. Besides a certain stability in resources, another commonality unites these ordinary people. They all value labor whether they are merchants or artisans or wealthy peasants; they share that important socioeconomic fact, which binds together their outlooks even though the actual wealth-level and occupation of individuals varies greatly. It is these people I am concerned with here. The challenge is to capture their mind world.
World History
