Together the three ordines made up a very small minority: women and children included possibly between a half and one percent of the total population. From the 2nd century, the division between this group and the rest of the population acquired a legal basis: the honestiores against the humiliores. But the fact that the dividing line between the elite and “the rest” was of prime importance does not mean that the 99% who made up “the rest” were a homogenous group. There were several other legal and economic dividing lines. The difference between citizen (civis) and non-citizen (peregrinus) still had a certain importance at the beginning of the imperial era, but when every inhabitant of the empire became the subject of a single monarch, this legal distinction gradually lost much of its significance. Roman citizenship used to have some attraction for the provincial elite, possibly more for ideological than for practical reasons, but as it became more common it could no longer function as a bait. The final outcome of this development was the so-called constitutio Antoniniana of 212, which conferred Roman citizenship on all (or almost all) free inhabitants of the empire. By then, however, citizenship had very little meaning: in practice, only the honestiores enjoyed the privileges that came with Roman citizenship, and the rest of the population had been reduced to the legal level of peregrini or slaves.
In addition, it should be mentioned that in the Greek East, citizenship had never been granted on the same scale as in the West. The division between the Greeks and the Hellenized on the one hand, and the “oriental” population of the inlands of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt on the other, was something Rome inherited from the Hellenistic era. The first
Figure 41 Grave stele of Regina, from South Shields on Hadrian’s Wall (2nd-3rd c. AD). This gravestone was discovered at South Shields, on Hadrian’s Wall, and is preserved in the Roman Fort Museum there. This stone, from the 2nd or 3rd century AD, is a perfect illustration of the cosmopolitanism of the Roman Empire. The epitaph reads as follows: “To the spirits of the departed. Barates from Palmyra [put up this stone] for his freedwoman and wife Regina, a Catuvellaunian. She was 30 years of age.” The text goes on, in Palmyrene: “Regina, freedwoman of Barates. Alas!” Regina, who has a Roman name, is a member of the Celtic tribe of the Catuvellauni, who were based in Hertfordshire, immediately to the north of London. She was the slave of Barates from Palmyra, in the far east of the empire. At some stage, Barates gave her freedom, and married her. On her gravestone, she is portrayed as a wealthy lady: she has risen in the world. Barates is far from home, but he is not the only one hailing from Palmyra on Hadrian’s Wall: we have the gravestone of a Barates from Corbridge. That is nearby, and it may be the same Barates, but the name was quite common in Palmyra. And there must have a Palmyrene stone mason at hand: the style of Regina’s grave marker is Palmyrene, and of course there is the Palmyrene text. Photo: © Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums/The Bridgeman Art Library
Two groups were eligible for Roman citizenship, whereas the others were not. But the Greeks and similar groups were not given citizenship as readily as comparable individuals and communities in the West.
The distinction between the free-born (ingenui), the slaves (servi), and the freedmen (liberti) was and remained more important than the one between citizens and non-citizens. Slavery was normal during the whole of the imperial period, although we have no figures. For some towns or regions, the argument can be made that about one-third of the
Population was un-free. On the other hand, in several parts of the empire there were no large communities of slaves; this phenomenon was confined to Italy and parts of North Africa, and some places in the Greek East where there were concentrations of slaves. Slavery never disappeared, but the number of slaves may have fallen during the imperial period. The virtually unlimited influx of slaves that had been characteristic of the 2nd and 1st century BC came to an end when Roman expansion was halted, but the external sources never ran completely dry because war and the capture of people continued. It is unclear whether the decline in external supplies may have been compensated for by the birth of slaves within households (as children of slaves), or by a supply of free individuals who sold themselves or were sold by their destitute parents. Slaves who were private property were probably well treated during the imperial period (a trend that is also reflected by legislation) and could hope for liberation (manumissio). Prisoners of war and convicts who were forced to work in the mines, however, led a hopeless (and probably rather short) life. On the other side of the spectrum were the slaves and freedmen who belonged to the imperial court, the so-called familia Caesaris. Several among them became so wealthy and powerfull that they cannot possibly be equated to the general mass of deprived and powerless slaves.
The free, too, could be in a dependent position; we have clear examples of this from Egypt, Gaul, and Asia Minor. Dependence could take many forms, ranging from slavery resulting from debt to the relative freedom of certain groups of tenants. As has been mentioned above, after the 2nd century, patron-client relationships between the rural population and the landowning elite developed into a kind of serfdom. This is another example of a leveling trend (compare what has been said about citizenship earlier): slave and free man came to resemble each other.
In most cases, freedmen invisibly merged with the free, even when bonds of patronage often tied them to their former masters. The wealthy liberti held a special position: they fell between two stools, because their status of former slave and their social position as rich individuals could not easily be reconciled. The number of wealthy individuals among the liberti was, in fact, somewhat out of proportion: we should be aware that these might have been people who had gained experience (and property) as the slaves of merchants, bankers, and entrepreneurs. Once free, a freedman often bought land, and it was only his origins that prevented him from joining the ranks of the decuriones. Sometimes the rule that decuriones should be born free was disregarded: the liberti’s money was welcome. Usually, however, members of this group were given a special function, that of Augustalis, which on the one hand set them apart and on the other hand enabled them to benefit the city with their wealth. The Augustales, sometimes even explicitly designated ordo (the ordo Augustalium), formed a college that directed the city’s imperial cult. In this way, rich freedmen could be involved in the city's euergetism.
In this discussion about slaves and freedmen, much has been said about the contrast between the rich and the poor. The existence of wealthy freedmen, and even of wealthy slaves, makes it clear that the distinction between the rich and the poor did not correspond with the distinction between the elite and the masses. The members of the three ordines may have been rich or very rich, but not every man of means belonged to the ordines. Disregarding their position in the official order, the rich could also be termed potentes, in Greek dunamenoi, “magnates,” those who, within a network of patronage, manage to
Ensure a maximum number of clients. Some of those below the level of the ordines may have been (relatively) rich; the majority of the empire’s population was poor or very poor. But they, likewise, were not a homogenous group, even though during the imperial period homogeneity increased as the gap between the rich and the poor widened. There was especially a large ideological difference between the poor city dwellers and the equally poor rural population. The city dwellers, a very small part of the total population, felt nothing but disdain for “those stupid yokels.” Rusticitas, “rusticity,” also stands for a lack of culture; urbanitas, “urbanity,” is almost synonymous with culture and refinement.
In this discussion about the contrast between the rich and the poor, we should also examine the extreme un-equalizing tendencies that characterized the Roman world. Sources tell us about properties of hundreds of millions of sestertii (hundreds of times what was required for membership of the highest ordo), but on the other hand poverty could be dire: in Egypt, tax collectors apparently considered it worth the trouble to register the ownership of one-tenth of a house or one-sixth of an olive tree. This also was true for incomes from government office: in the 1st century, a common legionary earned 900 sestertii a year; his officer, the centurio, made 15,000; the highest-ranking centurio 60,000; the legatus Augusti 200,000; the proconsul of the province of Asia pocketed 1 million sestertii a year.
Within the agrarian community that was the Roman Empire, property meant above all land. The unequal access to landownership was the basis of economic and social inequality, and it was maintained through heredity. Although we definitely find social mobility (both upward and downward), there were many insurmountable obstacles on the road to wealth. The groups that best managed to penetrate the ranks of the elite were often freedmen and, as their position gained importance in the course of the imperial period, soldiers and officers.
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