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[{"left":"Discussion Week 3: Roman Society during the Republic\n\n
","right":"http://student.land/discussion-week-3-roman-society-during-the-republic/\n\nDiscussion Week 3: Roman Society during the Republic\n\nRome was a hierarchical or “vertical” society,[1] both in the sense that there were wide gaps between powerful and powerless and/or rich and poor people and families, and in the sense that for both privileged and poor inhabitants of the city of Rome, its Italian allies and the provinces conquered by Roman armies during the Republican period, the most important human relations were vertical, between people who were politically, economically or socially unequal. Although one of the greatest legacies of Republican (and Imperial) Rome was the equality of citizens in terms of legal rights, as reflected in the Lex Hortensia of 287 BCE, which enfranchised the plebians, day-to-day life in Rome and its provinces was one in which individuals had to depend upon people more powerful than themselves for prosperity – and perhaps survival. Oppressing people weaker or poorer than himself while toadying to his superior, the bully was a ubiquitous feature of Roman life, as he/she is in other hierarchical societies.[2]\n\nIt is interesting that while classes or orders struggled with each other for economic and political rights in both the early and later centuries of Rome’s history, at almost no time do we see the emergence of movements, religions or ideologies that espoused radical equality or a utopian society in which oppression of man by man (or woman by man) would disappear. Although Christianity in the early centuries CE had subversive or revolutionary potential, the religion was quickly co-opted by the ruling elite (the Emperor Constantine in the 4th century) and millennial Christian movements really did not occur with any frequency until the allegedly “backward” Middle Ages.[3]\n\nInequality of wealth and power was considered by Romans to be an unavoidable and perennial fact of human life, as reflected in the fact that the slave rebels of Spartacus in the 1st century BCE did not cherish the goal of abolishing the institution of slavery, but only wanted to escape slavery themselves.[4] Although the originally Greek philosophy of Stoicism, popular in Republican and Imperial Rome, taught the radical idea that all humans by possessing souls had something of the divine in them, regardless of race or social class, Stoicism was a philosophy of individual self-cultivation rather than political or social activism – although it deeply influenced Christianity.\n\nSocial Classes. As we have already seen, in the early centuries of the Republic there was a “class struggle” between the patricians, who were the descendants of the founding families of Rome (much like the descendants of the passengers of the Mayflower, a self-defined elite) and the plebians, who were of more humble birth, often the descendants of non-Romans. This social distinction, however, began to break down in the latter half of the Republican period as the plebians won political and legal rights: some plebians became rich and powerful, while some patricians fell into poverty (the most famous example of the latter is the family of Julius Caesar). A new class structure emerged, defined by property qualifications: members of the Senatorial class were those holding the most property; followed by the equestrians (equites in Latin, sometimes translated as “knights”) who originally had been prosperous enough to own and equip a horse for military service and became an important component of the Roman merchant class; and small property holders, who originally had served as infantrymen in the army. Among citizens, the lowest class was the proletarii (“proletarians,” a word familiar to modern people through Marxism), who owned no property, and had to survive by selling their labor.\n\nThese class distinctions, which were determined by important officials called censors (censores, a Latin word related to “census”), existed among citizens. Non-citizens were at the bottom of the social scale. They included peregrini, foreigners, similar to the metics of the Greek city-state (these included a large Jewish population in Rome during the 1st century BCE), liberti or freedmen (also libertae or freed women), who had been born or became slaves but had been emancipated by their owners, and slaves (servi), who were regarded as chattel and had no political or legal rights.[5]\n\nThe Roman Family. The most intimate form of authority and the vertical society was found, naturally, within families. According to early Roman law, the father or grandfather (paterfamilias) possessed patria potestas, paternal authority or power, which meant that he had unquestioned control over his children (or grandchildren), including the right to disown them, order them to divorce their spouses, banish them or even execute them. After a child was born, the father had the choice of acknowledging him or her as his dependent, or ordering him/her to be abandoned or killed. As long as children remained under the patria potestas of their father or their grandfather, even as adults, they couldn’t own property. Although the harsher aspects of patria potestas were modified during the Imperial period, the Roman family remained strongly patriarchal. However, behind the scenes the wife or mother could exercise considerable power through influencing her father or husband, and some wealthy and well-connected women were very powerful in Roman society. For example, Terentia, the canny wife of Cicero, proved indispensable in guiding him along his successful political career. Although they could not hold office, Roman women had high"},{"left":"","right":""},{"left":"","right":""},{"left":"","right":""}]
Discussion Week 3: Roman Society during the Republic
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Dennis Bolton
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