Generals, senators, charioteers, poets, eccentric Caesars and lazy imperial wives. The Romans who star in peplums and historical novels represented, in reality, less than 1% of the population. They already monopolized almost all the attention of the chroniclers of their time, just as today’s celebrities monopolize the media. But if one was lucky or unlucky to be born in ancient Rome or its provinces, the chances are that his fate would be that of an ordinary Roman, what the patricians of the time called a plebeian.
Plebs means crowd, and this is, in effect, how society was divided at the beginning of the republic: a small group of privileged people and a large mass of citizens with few rights, with the addition of a few slaves integrated into family life. Democracy was designed to suit the patrician elite. Only they could be magistrates, priests or judges, and only they had the right to vote in the Senate.
The assemblies, or elections, were the only body in which the plebs could make their voices heard, but everything was rigged so that their votes never exceeded those of the patricians. To the curial elections, the nobles came surrounded by clients, citizens who depended on them financially and who voted without question for the candidate their patron supported. In the centurial assemblies, the 98 patrician centuries exceeded the 95 plebeian centuries. And if all this failed, the Senate could exercise its right of veto and annul any decision made in a popular assembly.
The patricians based all these advantages on tradition, but also on their military power. Until the 6th century BC. C., chivalry was decisive in winning a war, and Rome, recently detached from the Etruscan world and its monarchies, depended on the protection of its noble knights. But towards the 5th century BC. C., the way of fighting changed. The infantry became decisive in the new military tactics, and the commoners, who finally trusted their own strength, began to demand greater political prominence.
An economic crisis was the trigger for an unstoppable race for social improvements in republican Rome. Ordinary peasants are impoverished. For their part, the patricians need the plebeians as soldiers, to protect themselves from an imminent attack. They reach an agreement: in exchange for the help of the common people on the battlefield, debt slavery will be abolished.
Once the danger has passed, however, the patricians go back on their promise. The plebs react by calling for a secession, the first Roman strike of which we have evidence. They left Rome without manpower, went to the neighboring Holy Mountain and did not come down from there until they obtained three things: a plebeian assembly, two plebeian magistrates (the tribunes of the plebs) and a temple to the goddess Ceres, ruled by priests who were also plebeians. . The new tribunes of the plebs enjoyed inviolability, provided legal assistance to victims of judicial abuses, and, over time, acquired the right to veto any decision of the Senate that seriously harmed the interests of the lower classes.
The success of this protest encouraged the people to continue achieving rights. In the middle of the 5th century BC. C. the law of the Twelve Tables is written down. It is not exactly progressive legislation. Still, it guarantees the accused the right to a defense attorney and, most importantly, provides all citizens with a written standard to which they can appeal.
It would be a mistake to believe that these social movements were instigated by poor peasants and artisans. Behind them hid the ambition of a new social class, the enriched plebeian merchants, who aspired to obtain the same privileges as the patricians.
In 445 BC C. marriage between patricians and plebeians is authorized for the first time. A year later, the position of military tribune was created, open equally to candidates of high and low birth. Next, the censors appear, classifying citizens according to their assets. The economic hierarchy conditions the army: each soldier fights in one century or another depending on the war equipment that his income allows him to afford. Money begins to matter almost as much as blood purity.
Once the exclusively plebeian institutions were consolidated, these potentates changed tactics and claimed positions until then reserved for the patricians. Little by little they conquered the quaesture, the consulate, the dictatorship, the censorship, the praetorship and, finally, in 312 BC. C., the last bastion: plebeian senators obtain full voting rights in the Senate. Institution that, furthermore, can no longer arbitrarily veto the decisions made by the popular assembly. A new elite is born in which rich patricians and plebeians, related to each other, are no longer so different.
The republic found an effective remedy to also satisfy the poor and reduce social tensions: expansionism. The economic difficulties of the peasants could be resolved by conquering new territories and distributing the farmland among the people. The problem was that wealthy families also wanted to expand their estates, and their piece of the pie was always larger.
At first, the war favored citizens of high and low birth. In addition, there was a third class that benefited, the local slaves. Poverty no longer pushed peasants to sell their children, and in 326 BC. C. debt slavery was abolished. Whoever wanted serfs could choose from numerous prisoners of war.
They were subjected to inhumane treatment. And its tragedy ended up affecting the free peasantry as well. Rome, as owner of the Mediterranean, had become a power with inexhaustible raw materials. The wheat that arrived from the provinces was so cheap that local farmers could not compete on price and were ruined.
The large landowners took advantage of the circumstance to intimidate the small landowners and force them to undersell their plots. The dispossessed flooded the streets of Rome, condemned to live off the subsidies that politicians distributed to win the favor of the plebs.
At the end of the second century BC. C., several reforms tried to restore dignity to landless peasants, but they all failed. Another group in struggle did manage to make their demands a reality. The non-Roman Italics took up arms in 91 BC. C. to demand Roman citizenship and its corresponding benefits: the right to participate in political life, to serve in the army and to count in land distributions. They did not intend to disrupt the social order of Rome, only to be part of it, and they achieved it in just two years. From then on, all of Italy would be the epicenter of the Empire.
The principality of Augustus, which put an end to the republic and forty years of civil wars, did not significantly alter the lives of the most humble. In essence, the social structure remained intact at the time of the first Caesars. There were no major revolutionary movements.
The main sources of unrest moved to the provinces, whose inhabitants rebelled from time to time against Roman domination. But Romanization itself mitigated these conflicts, as the provincial elites acquired citizenship and saw the doors of a brilliant political career opening before them.
Concerned about maintaining control of such an extensive empire, Rome abandoned its expansionist policy and stabilized its borders. The flow of enslaved prisoners of war was interrupted, and their prices rose again. It was no longer convenient to exploit them to death, since they were not so easy to replace. Gradually, abuse stopped being frowned upon. Laws began to regulate the lives of serfs and grant them certain protection.
From the 3rd century AD. C., an unprecedented economic crisis hit the inhabitants of the Empire. The monarchy was weakened, the Senate was a dead letter and the army assumed levels of power unthinkable until then.
Of course, the lower classes were the most affected. Since Caracalla’s mandate, all the free inhabitants of the Empire were already Roman citizens, but it was of little use to them. The elites had just coined a new legal category that distanced them from the populace. They were honest, the most honest and, of course, the richest. Therefore, they deserved all kinds of privileges. Different laws were applied to the humiliors, due to their inferior status, and they could, for example, be whipped and tortured, a treatment that until then was reserved exclusively for slaves.
The State, in need of resources, overloaded all social groups with taxes. Those who lacked money were required to receive free labor benefits. All social mobility was frozen: to alleviate the shortage of labor, trades became mandatory and hereditary.
An increasingly corrupt network of officials collected official and unofficial taxes. In the countryside, small indebted landowners who had lost their farms signed rental agreements with large landowners, who gave them plots in exchange for an annual payment. These agreements, which initially lasted five years, soon became lifelong. In exchange, the peasants evaded state taxes and obtained the protection of their patrons, who defended themselves from the barbarians by fortifying their towns.
While the living conditions of the slaves, at least in theory, improved thanks to the new Christian mentality, the agricultural settlers became de facto slaves, servants tied to the land. Starting in the 4th century, a settler suspected of wanting to abandon his plot could be chained. They were prohibited from joining the Church or the army, and even from marrying peasants from other territories. The difference between free and slave, citizen and non-citizen, ceased to make sense.
Meanwhile, the Germanic tribes roamed freely across large parts of the old power. The Western Empire was disintegrating. From its ashes the foundations of the new feudal society already emerged.
This text is part of an article published in number 540 of the magazine Historia y Vida. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
