Earning the fruits of honour: a study of social mobility among the freeborn sub-elite in the Roman West

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.