The Cimbri defeated the consul, Catulus, at the Adige and must now fight the consul, Marius.
Eodan's Roman thrall, Flavius, is of the equestrian class. See also here. I have a feeling that, in Poul and Karen Anderson's Last King of Ys Tetralogy, Gratillonius' family is equestrian but will check this later.
See a previous post on Romans.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
If my memory is correct, Gaius Valerius Gratillonius thought of himself as coming from a "curial" family. By the time of the Later Roman Empire in the West people who had once been called "equestrians" were defined as "curiales." That is, solidly established people ranging from reasonably well off to very wealthy, but not aristocrats or patricians. The kind of people who did most of the day to day practical work of governing in rural regions and the smaller towns and cities. Plus tending to be the professionals who held the middle ranks in the legions.
Ad astra! Sean
The Republican class system divided "patricians" and "equestrians" and "plebeians" but by the late Republic this no longer corresponded to anything much in terms of actual property ownership; in particular, equestrians could have as much property as patricians.
Patrician rank came to be more sort of a social relic, associated with certain religious offices and restrictions (patricians had to marry according to "strict form", for example.) In theory patricians (and the Senatorial aristocracy, which overlapped with them but wasn't the same thing) couldn't engage in some economic activities like trade, but they did -- they just used equestrian partners as false fronts.
Roman social ranking was more flexible in practice than in theory -- a family could go from slave status to Senatorial rank in as little as three generations, and some did, which couldn't have happened in most places in the Classical world.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That's basically what I had in mind, you simply fleshed out my too brief summary.
The Romans could be and often were just as snobby and status conscious as anyone else. But they seemed to have been less rigid about it in political and legal terms.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment