The social hierarchy of this period can thus be briefly sketched as follows: At the bottom, there were the slaves in the countryside in Italy and Sicily, or those condemned to mines and quarries; only just a little higher stood the peasant populations in Egypt, the Near East, and Asia Minor, the agrarian proletariat in the Hellenistic world; a little above these, the urban proletariat in the big Hellenistic cities and Rome; above them, the middle-income groups of smallholders and free farmers in the countryside and various professionals in the cities, in which may be included also the freedmen and foreign residents there; above all of these, finally, a small elite of the rich and super rich. Representatives of these elites wielded political power everywhere, for they produced the councilors and magistrates, the generals and governors. Their riches were in the main traditionally agrarian, for they were large landowners who had their lands outside the cities worked for them by tenants or slaves. Only a few among them supplemented their agrarian wealth by commercial activities, and only a very few owed their riches solely to commerce. Presumably, the latter could only be found in some cities in the east, such as in Phoenicia, and rarely elsewhere. In case someone had become rich by commerce, he as a rule invested his capital as soon as possible in landed property, for in the Greco-Roman world only that was considered respectable. The Roman law of 218 BC even formally stipulated that the senatorial elite were not to concern themselves with overseas trade. Whenever a Roman senator wished to engage in commerce, he used intermediaries or straw men: freedmen could be very useful for this purpose. By such roundabout means, senators could even be involved in the ceramic industry or in brick works, but this was probably rare. Senators who really traded in most cases sold the
Produce of their estates, and in practice this was handled by their stewards. The ideal of being a respectable landowner was so strong that even most of the Roman “knights,” who were not barred by law from going into commerce, preferred to lead the traditional life of the large landowner.
The sources of this wealth in land could vary: for some, it was the result of lucky inheritances and/or profitable marriages, coupled with some successful transactions; for others, it was the investment of capital acquired elsewhere; for most, however, these riches were the fruit of political power. In the Hellenistic kingdoms, all the land was in theory the property of the king, who could and did give away parts of it to ministers and generals, officials and favorites. Vast estates in western Asia and in Egypt had thus come into private hands. In Italy, the expansion of Rome had been accompanied by the acquisition of land that was regularly distributed among poor citizens as well as among the Roman elite. The latter also occupied much of the state lands, which after the war with Hannibal had become so extensive that the old rules limiting their use were no longer applied, so that rich senators and equites took possession of large tracts for their latifundia and grazing grounds. Next, the Roman rich and powerful acquired new possessions in the provinces or bought more land with capital derived from war booty or the extortion of non-Romans. In this way, the wealth of the elite grew apace with the political successes of the state. The rise of Rome led to an accumulation of riches in the hands of the Roman elite as had never been seen before, and the gulf between this elite and those at the bottom of society, the slaves and proletarians, was deeper and wider than ever.
Between the social and economic realities of the Hellenistic world and the traditional political norms of the city-state, especially of the Greek polis with its notion of a certain degree of equality of all citizens, there was a growing rift. In this period, a new phenomenon (but related to the liturgies of the Classical Period) emerges that can be seen as an attempt to bridge it: euergetism, literally, “doing good” for the community, “giving” on a large scale, on the part of the rich and powerful (a phenomenon that would come to flourish in the first centuries AD). Euergetism involved the gift to the citizen population of articles such as grain (not only in times of need but also sometimes on festive occasions), and the financing of festivals, theater shows, sacrifices, and games, and public works. That the rich were prepared to do this had everything to do with the old ideal of time (honor), for their euergetism was invariably rewarded with public praise, taking the shape of honorary inscriptions or even statues. Thus, in some way the elite and the mass of the citizens needed and supplemented each other: in exchange for honor and public praise, which would translate into election for magistracies and councils—in other words, into political power—the elite was prepared to dip deep into its purses. On the other hand, by receiving all those benefits, the poor citizens could still believe that they belonged to a polis community, the leaders of which they gladly recognized as their benefactors.
World History
