9

It's obvious that people in the Senate or people with political power would be considered of higher status, while ordinary plebs, such as farmers, would have a lower status. However, where exactly would specialized workers, such as blacksmiths, jewelers etc. have fit in society? Would they have had more/less privileges or around the same as another social class?

yannis
  • 14,883
  • 3
  • 83
  • 112
Reliable Source
  • 899
  • 8
  • 23
  • Ancient Greece wasn't as cohesive as Ancient Rome, even during the Hellenistic period. Each city state had its own societal structure, and although there were many similarities, there were also many distinct differences. Would you mind making this question only about Ancient Rome, and asking a new one about Ancient Greece? – yannis Dec 07 '12 at 09:08
  • @YannisRizos Sure. – Reliable Source Dec 07 '12 at 13:21
  • Ok then, I've edited this question to only be about Rome, ping me when you ask another one about Ancient Greece, I might have a good answer for you. – yannis Dec 10 '12 at 13:11
  • @YannisRizos I started a new topic at http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/5902/what-was-the-status-of-specialized-workers-during-greek-times – Reliable Source Dec 10 '12 at 14:46

1 Answers1

3

There were essentially 3 classes of Roman -

Patrician, an elite wealthy group of families, who mostly formed the senate

Plebeian, free land owning citizens, some with a right to vote, some without depending on whether they lived in Rome or outside it and

Slaves, who were considered property and had no rights.

Specialised workers therefore could have fallen into either of plebeian or slave. Plebeian if they worked for themselves and slave if they undertook the work on behalf of an owner.

Privilege was earnt by right of status and/or wealth rather than what work you undertook.

The wealthier you were the more status and influence you would have and this characteristically brought wealthy non-patrician plebeians into conflict with less wealthy patricians.

spiceyokooko
  • 1,199
  • 6
  • 8
  • 2
    This answer is correct for a particular time period - the early Republic, say the 5th century BCE. Later the patricians and the wealthy plebeians were merged to form a new social upper class - the nobiliate. (The distinction persevered but it mattered very little). The main principle, though, remained valid: there was no middle-class in the modern sense of the term in Rome. – Felix Goldberg Dec 05 '12 at 12:15
  • Any information on ancient Greece? – Reliable Source Dec 05 '12 at 12:16
  • However, another qualification must be made: in a number of generations families could rise and join the ranks of the nobility. This was mostly true during the Empire (even the Antonine Senate hardly had any members from the old nobility, and that before the crisis of the 3rd century which wiped out many noble families), and in a much weaker form during the Republic when the phenomenon of homo novus existed (look it up in wikipedia). – Felix Goldberg Dec 05 '12 at 12:17
  • @FelixGoldberg - What relevance would the nobiliate have to specialised manual workers? I'm not a fan of over-complicating answers to the point that the original question gets lost. There's too much of that on here already, I'm not going to add to it. – spiceyokooko Dec 05 '12 at 12:27
  • @Reliable Source - I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about Greece to offer an answer. As far as I'm aware they had a similar system of upper class citizens who didn't work, middle class non-citizens who probably undertook the types of work you mention and lower class non-citizens who were probably ex-slaves and slaves. – spiceyokooko Dec 05 '12 at 12:32
  • @spiceyokooko: I was just trying to provide some context for the answer, as the patrician-plebeian distinction morphed quite a bit as time went on. – Felix Goldberg Dec 05 '12 at 14:29
  • @spiceyokooko: Re: Greece, I'd rather wait for someone for expert than me to weigh in, but basically looking at Athens I think that the three-tier system you propose in inaccurate. First of all, there were rather few citizens by modern standards - not more than 50,000 at the height of Athens's glory, and Athens was by far the largest Greek polis. This citizen body was composed of rich and poor alike; recall that Pericles instituted pay for participation in popular assemblies, exactly in order to encourage the poor citizens to do so. – Felix Goldberg Dec 05 '12 at 14:32
  • There were also "meteki", free foreigners who did not possess any citizen rights and probably carried on some of the trades <not sure about that, need a real expert on this point>, and slaves who did all the hard work. Unlike in Rome, trades were not plied by freedmen. – Felix Goldberg Dec 05 '12 at 14:34