Property-Based Classes

[Quintus Acilius Italicus]

Good afternoon everyone,

 

I am new to the forums, but a long time reader of the content of this site. What brings me here is a question I have tried to find the answer to for a long time, but have always come up empty handed. I have constuled Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy on the issue, and he was unable to give me an answer.

 

There were six property based classes in Rome. The Senatorial Class which is usually said one had to have a networth of 1,000,000 sestertii to be a member. Below them were the Equites, and it is understood that one needed a worth of at least 400,000 sestertii to be considered part of this class. Then there are three other classes, which are defined in several sources such as "The Property Qualifications of the Roman" by H. Mattingly in the Journal of Roman Studies.

 

Mattingly states that the three classes in question, the 3rd, 4th and 5th classes, were defined as 50,000 asses, 25,000 asses and 11,000 asses respectively. Then of course, the proletarii who were worth under 11,000 asses.

 

In short, my question to you all is, what were the names of the classes Mattingly calls the 3rd, 4th and 5th classes, between the Equites and the Proletarii?

 

I would appreciate any sources you feel may be helpful in my quest.

 

Thank you greatly for your time.

[caldrail]

I don't believe the Romans ever named the classes as such, and the source that describes does so retrospectively, suggesting an older form of organisation that had become blurred and disused. Whilst the information clearly is factual (at least as far as our Roman author was concerned), we should be careful of drawing too many conclusions from it. Were these classes fixed or mutable? Did a person move from one to the other based on current fortune or was his place defined at some point regardless? I know that the reference to republican legions is based on these categories but again I think it's too simplistic to simply state these as 'units' of organisation, especially since they were civil in nature and represent a very cogent idaea in Roman society that all citizens must be prepared to defend their land against aggressors according to their means.

[Pompieus]

The details of the organization of the Roman people in the centuriate assembly (which is where the property "classes" were used) is a vexing question because (I believe) the primary sources are limited to Livy i.42-43 and Dionysius of Halicarnassus iv.16-21 and vii.59, who describe the assembly as created by king Servius Tullius. And random references in Cicero such as Phil 2.39 and De res publica ii.39. All modern interpretations have been based on those few references.

 

It is not clear that there was a specific property qualification for a senator until Augustus though they probably required at least the equestrian census to be active in politics. It was the task of the Censors to assess each citizens property and place them in the appropriate century. There was no "senatorial class" in the centuriate assembly. There were 18 centuries of equites, and 5 "classes" of pedites (with varying numbers of centuries) plus one large century of non-property-owning citizens, the capiti censi. But in which centuries did the senators vote? Did the 18 equestrian centuries include everyone with the equestrian cenus or just those who held the public horse (equo publico)?

 

You might try Lily Ross Taylor and G W Botsford on Roman Voting Assemblies, but I have never seen the 5 "classes" referred to by anything other than "first", "second" etc and (appropriately) roman numerals - unless you mean pedites as opposed to equites or that sometimes the centuries of the "first" class were referred to as classes and the others as infra classem, or that the the first six centuries of equites were called sex suffragio.