In the later Roman Empire, honestiores and humiliores emerged as two broad distinctions of social and legal status, those who had held the higher offices (honores) and humbler people.[1][2][3] The division starts to become apparent near the end of the 2nd century AD.[4]
Those of senatorial and equestrian rank and those who had held an office at the level of decurion or higher possessed greater honors and therefore were honestiores.[5][6] They made up around 1% of the Roman population.[citation needed]
Humiliores were free people, including freedmen (liberti), who held Roman citizenship without having achieved the privileges of higher office. Peregrini (free non-citizens who lived within the empire),[7] tenant farmers, and coloni [8] were also among the humiliores.
The granting of universal citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire in AD 212 seems to have exacerbated the division between the upper and lower classes. As the principles of citizen equality under the Roman Republic decayed, humiliores were increasingly subject to harsher legal penalties, such as corporal punishment or public humiliation, formerly reserved for slaves.[9][10][11][12] Honestiores retained the rights that had been held by all Roman citizens, at least in theory, during the Republic, including freedom from corporal and capital punishment.[13] [14]
Paul B. Duff characterizes the attitude of the elite toward humiliores as a kind of loathing that regarded them as lazy and dishonest.[15]
References
- ^ McLynn 2009, pp. 482–483.
- ^ MacMullen 2019, p. 192.
- ^ Peachin 2011, p. 153.
- ^ Ville Vuolanto, "Selling a Freeborn Child: Rhetoric and Social Realities in the Late Roman World," Ancient Society 33 (2003), p. 191.
- ^ Perkins 2008, p. 5-6.
- ^ Duff 2001, p. 18-21.
- ^ Rohmann 2012, p. 1.
- ^ Grubbs 2002, p. 10.
- ^ Grubbs 2002, p. 12.
- ^ Berger 2002, p. 490.
- ^ Lapidge 2018, p. 24-29.
- ^ Fleiner 2020.
- ^ Sarris 2011, p. 29.
- ^ Peachin 2011, p. 153–154, 475.
- ^ Duff 2017, p. 173.
Bibliography
- Berger, Adolf (2002). Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law. The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 978-1-58477-142-5.
- Duff, Paul B. (2017-11-21). Jesus Followers in the Roman Empire. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4674-4838-3.
- Duff, Paul B. (2001). Who Rides the Beast?: Prophetic Rivalry and the Rhetoric of Crisis in the Churches of the Apocalypse. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-513835-1.
- Fleiner, Carey (2020-02-28). A writer's guide to Ancient Rome. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-1-5261-3525-4.
- Grubbs, Judith A. (2002). Women and the Law in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce and Widowhood. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-15240-2.
- Lapidge, Michael (2018). The Roman Martyrs: Introduction, Translations, and Commentary. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-881136-7.
- Rohmann, Dirk (2012-10-26), Bagnall, Roger S; Brodersen, Kai; Champion, Craige B; Erskine, Andrew (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., pp. wbeah22157, doi:10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah22157, ISBN 978-1-4443-3838-6, retrieved 2022-10-08
- Sarris, Peter (2011-10-27). Empires of Faith: The Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam, 500-700. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-162002-7.
- Matyszak, Philip (2014-04-03). The Roman Empire: A Beginner's Guide. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-78074-425-4.
- MacMullen, Ramsay (2019-02-19). Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays in the Ordinary. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-19805-7.
- McLynn, Frank (2009-08-11). Marcus Aurelius: A Life. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-81830-1.
- Peachin, Michael (2011). The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations in the Roman World. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-518800-4.
- Perkins, Judith (2008-08-22). Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-15264-3.
Literature
- A. H. M. Jones (1964). The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey. Taylor & Francis.
- Krause, Jens-Uwe (Munich). "Honestiores/Humiliores". Brill's New Pauly.
This page was last edited on 9 September 2023, at 06:31