‘Society’ covers a very broad range of human activity, and the interests of historians of Roman society have differed markedly. The great social historians of imperial Rome writing about a century ago were primarily concerned with a description of what anthropologists call ‘high culture’ (including literature, philosophy, and religion). Since then, the primary interest of social historians has shifted from ‘the inner moral life of the time’ to ‘daily life’ in Rome and, more importantly, the structure of Roman society. This last interest will form the subject of the present chapter.Which terms and categories are best suited to the analysis of Roman social structure? Rostovtzeff’s monumental Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, exemplary in its integration of the social with the economic and political developments of the Principate, employs a system of economic classes, including an entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, which is more appropriate to a modern capitalist society than the Roman world. A more satisfactory explanation of the course of Roman history has not yet been provided by any Marxist writer, for example in terms of class struggle between propertied exploiters and propertyless exploited. There will remain overt political conflicts, such as that between propertied freedmen and propertied senators, which are difficult to accommodate in the model.
