Everywhere, anyone’s status in society could be defined in more or less precise juridical or political terms. First of all, there was the separation between citizens and non-citizens. The classical Greek polis had been built on this separation, and in the Hellenistic period too, it was still formally maintained, both in the Greek motherland and in the new Greek cities in Egypt and western Asia. But certainly in the latter, the distinction began to fade away. In several Asian communities founded by Hellenistic kings, more Asians than Greeks were resident; while only Greeks—not invariably all Greeks in the city—enjoyed full citizenship as politai. Other ethnic groups, such as the omnipresent Jews, often had their own communities with forms of self-government, so that the polis strictly speaking was not identical with the city. For the Greek population, it was not always possible to maintain its privileged position, and thus, certainly in everyday life, politai and other groups to some degree merged into one amalgam. In the Greek motherland, it was a little easier to hold on to the old delimitations of the citizenship, although it is striking that in the Hellenistic period, in various poleis, citizenship was granted to foreigners much more often than would have been possible in the Classical age—sometimes even collectively to all the citizens of a friendly city in treaties of “equal citizenship” between two poleis. This suggests that citizenship was no longer considered such an exclusive prerogative, presumably because in real life it had lost part of its significance. On the whole, this was true of Rome also.
Until far into the 4th century BC, Rome was a city-state with a limited territory. When the Roman expansion began, however, since 340 BC, Roman citizenship proved to be a much more flexible institution than citizenship in a Greek polis was. With relative ease, the Romans granted their citizenship to subdued cities and peoples in Italy, thereby considerably increasing the number of Roman citizens. They also created intermediate forms of citizenship, such as a citizenship without voting rights that was given to a number of cities and that after one or two generations was invariably converted into full citizenship. The privilege of citizens of allied Latin cities that allowed them to move to Rome individually, where they then would receive Roman citizenship, can also be seen as an extended promise of Roman citizenship to these cities. On the other hand, though, the Romans also created a separate category of Roman citizenship, that of the freedmen who—in contrast to Greek cities, where freed slaves became free residents but not citizens—received Roman citizenship with certain limitations, such as voting rights only in the four urban tribus or districts and no right to be elected for any magisterial function. In Roman society, it seems, possessing Roman citizenship meant less for a person’s status than the possession of citizenship had meant for the polites of the Classical Greek polis, and looked more like the possession of the somewhat devalued citizenship of contemporary
Greek cities. In Rome, this was naturally related to the much greater significance of the social hierarchy. Here, someone’s status was above all determined by whether he belonged to the super-elite of the nobiles, or to the wider group of the senators, or to the equites or “knights,” or to which of the five official property classes of the citizenry, or whether he even fell below the latter and belonged simply to the proletarii; and further, whether he belonged to the clientes of a distinguished patronus, to the amici of a powerful man, and so forth.
The stress on social hierarchy in Rome was doubtless already well established but seems in the period of Roman expansion to have increased even more. It was in the 4th and early 3rd centuries BC that citizens were classified into five property classes. The assignment of the individual citizen—after an assessment of his property by the censores—to one of these classes was officially related to the requirements made of the citizens concerning their military equipment, since only citizens of these property classes served in the army. But in the course of time, the variations in weaponry and equipment between the citizens disappeared, but the five classes remained. This organization, then, primarily served not the needs of the army but the voting procedure in the comitia centuriata. There, among the common citizens, those of the first class cast their votes first, then those of the second class next, and so on, giving the wealthier citizens a disproportionate influence on the outcome of the voting. Likewise, it was in this period that the special categories of citizenship without voting rights and the limited citizenship of freedmen were created. Next, within the Roman elite in the late 3rd century BC, a formal delimitation was introduced by a law of 218 BC that forbade senators from owning seagoing ships, thus making it impossible for them to engage personally in overseas trade. As a consequence, the senators were now distinguished from the rest of the wealthy elite in that they followed some special rules. About 100 years later, the senators were formally no longer considered as “knights with a seat in the senate,” but as a separate ordo, the members of which no longer received money for the upkeep of a warhorse from the state, as the real “knights” or equites did, and who in the assembly of the comitia centuriata no longer voted together with the equites in one block of 18 centuriae, but were now classified under the citizens of the first property class. As a result of this, there were now two ordines within the wealthy elite: the senators and the equites. The latter possessed property yielding at least 400,000 sestertii annually, served in their younger years in the army in various officer ranks, and received for their horse a state subsidy. Thus, the ordo senatorius, to which membership of the senate was limited, was set apart from the ordo equester, a much larger group of several thousand persons whose members could be officers but not army commanders—since only senators were magistrates and commanders in the field—and enjoyed greater freedom in regard to economic activities, such as participating in a consortium of publicani, but could not follow a political career. Those with political ambitions had to give up all commercial activities and try to get elected into one of the lower magistracies, thus becoming senators, after which they could try by befriending senators and nobles to climb higher, although it was very exceptional for a newcomer to reach as high as the consulate. Most members of the equestrian order did not have such ambitions and were satisfied with managing their landed property. It was they whom politicians such as Gaius Gracchus and later populares tried to mobilize against the senate, with limited success. After the establishment of the monarchy, though, the equestrian order would serve
As the most important reservoir of candidates for officer posts and various other functions in the service of the emperors.
Thus, the expansion of the Roman state brought about a further development and refinement of the social hierarchy. Various formalized categories arose for Roman citizens and for non-citizens within the state. Among those who possessed Roman citizenship, a distinction was made between the elites of the two ordines and the rest; between the five property classes and the proletarii (who until the time of Marius were largely excluded from the army); between the freeborn and the freedmen. Outside the orbit of the civitas Romana, the allies with Latin status were distinguished from the other allies in Italy, where the former had more privileges and could on an individual basis rather easily acquire Roman citizenship. Officially, all allies counted as peregrini, foreigners, and they had to serve in their own contingents in the Roman army. Only after the Social War in 89 BC would they receive full Roman citizenship. Outside Italy, the inhabitants of the Roman provinces were subjects who had to pay their tribute and stay quiet, disarmed and powerless in the face of the governor and his troops. The inhabitants of the so-called free and autonomous cities that had concluded treaties of friendship with Rome were considered free peregrini. Of course, they had in fact lost their independence, but their autonomy guaranteed them freedom from Roman taxes and Roman jurisdiction. Beginning in the time of Caesar, more and more citizens of provincial towns and cities, autonomous or not, would receive Roman citizenship on a personal basis. As to the slaves, they were evidently non-citizens as well, but those belonging to Roman masters could hope one day to be freed and thereby become Roman citizens in their turn.
The Greek cities lacked the formal hierarchies of Rome. Here, the traditional tripartite division between citizens, slaves, and foreign residents was still in force. Former slaves in these cities became foreign residents, not citizens as in Rome. Within the citizenry, there were no formal “classes” or ranks. However, as stated before, the value of the citizenship must have decreased, especially since practically everywhere the democracies had given way to oligarchies and the growing divide between rich and poor became the new hierarchy. In the Greek cities in Asia, moreover, the indigenous population constituted a fourth category, living either as separate groups in the cities themselves, or in the surrounding countryside. They were mostly tenants working the lands owned by the citizens, and were sometimes near-serfs. Although not without some rights, they were certainly excluded from the assemblies and the magistracies and could not be considered citizens. Other tenants or serfs in western Asia worked the lands owned by large temples or exceptionally rich individuals, such as ministers of the crown. The picture here was further complicated by the existence in Syria, Judea, and elsewhere of free peasants or farmers who owned their lands and lived together in villages or small towns under the direct authority of the king, his satrap or, later, the Roman governor. They often remained largely outside the influence of Hellenistic culture, although subject to the kings and later to Rome. In Egypt too, there were free farmers on lands granted to them by the king, originally Macedonians and Greeks, later also native Egyptians. But the mass of the people here were dependent tenant-farmers or peasants working the lands of the king, of temples or of rich ministers or courtiers, and living in villages together, under constant supervision, in serf-like status. Here, the chasm separating a factually un-free peasant population and the Greek citizens of Alexandria, not
To mention the courtiers and functionaries around the king, was wider than anywhere else between the inhabitants of one state in the Hellenistic and Roman world.
World History
