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In ancient Rome, the plebeians or plebs (2025). 9780739478097, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780739478097 were the general body of free Roman citizens who were not patricians, as determined by the Capite censi, or in other words "". Both classes were hereditary.
In Latin, the word is a singular collective noun, and its genitive is plebis. Plebeians were not a monolithic social class.
In the early Roman Republic, there are attested 43 clan names, of which 10 are plebeian with 17 of uncertain status.
There existed an aristocracy of wealthy families in the regal period, but "a clear-cut distinction of birth does not seem to have become important before the foundation of the Republic". The literary sources hold that in the early Republic, plebeians were excluded from magistracies, religious Roman collegia, and the Roman Senate. However, some scholars doubt that patricians monopolised the magistracies of the early republic, as plebeian names appear in the lists of Roman magistrates back to the fifth century BC. It is likely that patricians, over the course of the first half of the fifth century, were able to close off high political office from plebeians and exclude plebeians from permanent social integration through marriage.
Plebeians were enrolled into the curiae and the tribes; they also served in the army and also in army officer roles as tribuni militum.
Ancient Roman tradition claimed that the Conflict led to laws being published, written down, and given open access starting in 494 BC with the law of the Twelve Tables, which also introduced the concept of equality before the law, often referred to in Latin as libertas, which became foundational to republican politics. This succession also forced the creation of plebeian tribunes with authority to defend plebeian interests. Following this, there was a period of consular tribunes who shared power between plebeians and patricians in various years, but the consular tribunes apparently were not endowed with religious authority. In 445 BC, the lex Canuleia permitted intermarriage among plebeians and patricians.
There was a radical reform in 367–6 BC, which abolished consular tribunes and "laid the foundation for a system of government led by two consuls, shared between patricians and plebeians" over the religious objections of patricians, requiring at least one of the consuls to be a plebeian. And after 342 BC, plebeians regularly attained the consulship. Debt bondage was abolished in 326, freeing plebeians from the possibility of slavery by patrician creditors. By 287, with the passage of the lex Hortensia, plebiscites – or laws passed by the concilium plebis – were made binding on the whole Roman people. Moreover, it banned senatorial vetoes of plebeian council laws. And also around the year 300 BC, the priesthoods also were shared between patricians and plebeians, ending the "last significant barrier to plebeian emancipation".
The veracity of the traditional story is profoundly unclear: "many aspects of the story as it has come down to us must be wrong, heavily modernised... or still much more myth than history". Substantial portions of the rhetoric put into the mouths of the plebeian reformers of the early Republic are likely imaginative reconstructions reflecting the late republican politics of their writers. Contradicting claims that plebs were excluded from politics from the fall of the monarchy, plebeians appear in the consular lists during the early fifth century BC. The form of the state may also have been substantially different, with a temporary ad hoc "senate", not taking on fully classical elements for more than a century from the republic's establishment.
Throughout the Second Samnite War (326–304 BC), plebeians who had risen to power through these social reforms began to acquire the aura of nobiles]] ("nobility", also "fame, renown"), marking the creation of a ruling elite of nobiles. From the mid-4th century to the early 3rd century BC, several plebeian–patrician "tickets" for the consulship repeated joint terms, suggesting a deliberate political strategy of cooperation.
No contemporary definition of nobilis or novus homo (a person entering the nobility) exists; Mommsen, positively referenced by Brunt (1982), said the nobiles were patricians, patrician whose families had become plebeian (in a conjectural transitio ad plebem), and plebeians who had held curule offices (e.g., dictator, consul, praetor, and curule aedile). Becoming a senator after election to a quaestorship did not make a man a nobilis, only those who were entitled to a curule seat were nobiles. However, by the time of Cicero in the post-Sullan Republic, the definition of nobilis had shifted. Now, nobilis came to refer only to former consuls and the direct relatives and male descendants thereof. The new focus on the consulship "can be directly related to the many other displays of pedigree and family heritage that became increasingly common after Sulla" and with the expanded senate and number of praetors diluting the honour of the lower offices.
A person becoming nobilis by election to the consulate was a novus homo (a new man). Gaius Marius and Cicero are notable examples of novi homines (new men) in the late Republic, when many of Rome's richest and most powerful men – such as Lucullus, Marcus Crassus, and Pompey – were plebeian nobles.
Education was limited to what their parent would teach them, which consisted of only learning the very basics of writing, reading and mathematics. Wealthier plebeians were able to send their children to schools or hire a private tutor.
Plebeians in ancient Rome lived in three or four-storey buildings called insula, apartment buildings that housed many families. These apartments usually lacked running water and heat. These buildings had no bathrooms and was common for a pot to be used. The quality of these buildings varied. Accessing upper floors was done via a staircase from the street they were built on. Sometimes these were built around a courtyard and of these, some were built around a courtyard containing a cistern. Lower floors were of higher quality while the higher ones were less so. By the beginning of the Roman Empire, the insulae were deemed to be so dangerous because of a risk to collapse that Emperor Augustus passed a law limiting the height of the buildings to but it appeared this law was not closely followed as buildings appeared that were six or seven floors high. Plebeian apartments had frescoes and mosaics on them to serve as decorations. Rents for housing in cities was often high because of the amount of demand and simultaneously low supply. Rents were higher in Rome than other cities in Italy along with other provincial cities. The owner of the insulae did not attend to duties regarding it and instead used an insularius who was most often an educated slave or a freedman instead. Their job was to collect rent from tenants, manage disputes between individual tenants and be responsible for maintenance.
Not all plebeians lived in these conditions, as some wealthier plebs were able to live in single-family homes, called a domus. Another type of housing that existed was diversorias (lodging houses) which were made of timber frames and wicker walls open to streets with the exception of shutters being one to two floors high with tightly packed spaces.
Some plebeians would sell themselves into slavery or their children in order to have access to wealthy households and to them hopefully advance socially along with getting a chance to have an education. Another way plebeians would try to advance themselves was by joining the military which became easier after the Marian reforms as soldiers were expected to pay for their own weapons. By joining the military they could get a fixed salary, share of war loot along with a pension and an allotted land parcel. There was also the reward of getting citizenship for non-citizens. Potential recruits needed to meet a variety of requirements as well which included: being male, at least tall, enlist before one was 35, having a letter of recommendation and completing training.
In Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake, there is a major class divide. The rich and educated live in safeguarded facilities while others live in dilapidated cities referred to as the "pleeblands".
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