Earning the fruits of honour: a study of social mobility among the freeborn sub-elite in the Roman West
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Date
29/11/2021Author
Thorp, Thaddeus
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis examines the extent of, and attitude toward, upward social mobility among
the sub-elite, freeborn, urban population of the Roman west during the first two centuries
AD. ‘Upward social mobility’ is defined as the acquisition, by individuals, of important
social and civic positions that afforded the holder, in Bordieuan terms, ‘symbolic’ or
‘social capital’. The ‘sub-elite’ freeborn population is identified as those (male) freeborn
inhabitants who were not already members of ordines decurionum, the ordo equester, and the
ordo senatorius; for ease of analysis they are divided here between a plebs media and a plebs
humilis. Chapter I examines the attitude toward sub-elite social mobility among the social
elite and argues that it can be characterised in terms of Scott’s terminology of ‘public’ and
‘private’ transcripts. In other words, contrary to what is often accepted by historians,
Roman elites were more accepting of social mobility than certain literary texts suggest,
since it could suit their own interests. Chapter II examines the extent of social mobility
among the plebs media and argues that not all successful Roman merchants in fact wanted
to achieve social mobility in the manner often assumed by historians. Chapter III
challenges the commonly-held view that manual trades in the urban economy were
dominated by slaves and freedmen. Flaws in the standard argument and method are
identified through a historiographical review of the topic. Then, evidence is presented
from a new study undertaken as part of this PhD project of occupational epigraphy
outwith Italy, the results of which are used to offer a fresh perspective on the topic and
to argue for a much higher number of freeborn artisans and retailers. Chapter IV builds
on these conclusions to argue that the acquisition of economic, social, and symbolic
capital was only really possible for a privileged stratum within the plebs humilis, which, it is
argued, constituted an ‘aristocracy of labour’. In its totality, this thesis reassesses the
structural possibility of social mobility among the freeborn in the early imperial Roman
west, showing that it was highly complex and non-linear and, notwithstanding the pre-eminence typically granted in the scholarship to servile and libertine social advancement,
demonstrates that the phenomenon must be reckoned with in our historical imagination.