THE SOCIAL HIERARCHY 139a sizeable heterogeneous group of men of free birth can be distinguished
from both the elite orders and the humble masses. The apparitores , that is,
the lictors, scribes and other staff of Roman magistrates to whom attention
has recently been drawn, are but a small segment of this group. However, the
apparitores actually serve to confi rm the essential dichotomy, insofar as their
rank derived from their position as appendages to the ruling aristocrats.
There was no genuine ‘middle class’ in the sense of an intermediate group
with independent economic resources or social standing.^27
Finally, slaves. In Roman law, slaves were classifi ed as chattel, not persons,
as a ‘speaking tool’ ( instrumentum vocale ) that could be bought and sold or
punished at the will of the masters. Some imperial rulings gave limited
recognition to their humanity. For instance, Claudius decided that masters
who abandoned sick slaves to avoid the costs of caring for them could not
reclaim them if they recovered health. By the reign of Hadrian, ergastula (the
private prisons on estates where slaves were kept in chains) were prohibited
by imperial law, the punitive sale of slaves was regulated, and the master’s
right of life and death over his slaves was taken away. Such laws may have
suppressed some of the worst abuses, but they did not alter the slave’s
fundamental lack of power and honour vis-à-vis his master. The psychological
oppression associated with lack of freedom, the threat of the whip, of the
break- up of slave families and of sexual abuse, continued unabated.^28
In a culture so sensitive to rank, how was the hierarchy of rank made
known and reinforced across culturally diverse communities? Rank was
asserted in the clothing that people wore. For senators and their sons
Augustus reserved the toga with the broad purple stripe. Equestrians were
marked out by the gold rings on their fi ngers and the narrow purple stripes
on their togas. So strong was the association of rank with apparel that some
unworthies at the beginning of the Principate usurped equestrian privileges
simply by wearing a gold ring, prompting Tiberius’ regulations to restrict
the rank to the deserving (Pliny, HN 33.32). Similarly, Claudius threatened
punishment against non- citizens who called themselves by the tria nomina ,
the three names that, along with the toga, indicated possession of Roman
citizenship.^29
Romans paraded their rank whenever they appeared in public, and
nowhere more conspicuously than at public spectacles in theatre, amphitheatre
and circus. In Rome, Augustus confi rmed and extended late Republican
arrangements that allocated special seats or rows of seats to senators,
equestrians and citizens:
He issued special regulations to prevent the disorderly and haphazard
system by which spectators secured seats for these shows, having been
outraged by the insult to a senator who, on entering the crowded theatre
at Puteoli, was not offered a seat by a single member of the audience. The
consequent senatus consultum provided that at every performance,
wherever held, the front row of stalls must be reserved for senators...