140 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Other rules of his included the separation of soldiers from civilians; the
assignment of special seats to married commoners, to boys not yet come
of age, and, close by, to their tutors; and a ban on the wearing of dark
clothes, except in the back rows.^30In the municipalities, the seating was arranged to give spatial defi nition to
the distinction between the curial order and ordinary citizens. Caesar’s law
for the colony of Urso in Spain had already specifi ed detailed regulations for
seating in the amphitheatre and theatre, and laid down enormous fi nes for
violations – an indication that something more was at stake than getting a
good seat to watch the show.^31
Putting everyone in his proper place was a visual affi rmation of the
dominance of the imperial social structure, and one calculated to impress
the bulk of the population of the empire. There were other displays of rank,
such as the annual parade in Rome for equestrians, which Augustus renewed
(Suetonius, Aug. 38.3; Cassius Dio 55.31.2), and the public banquets and
distributions in the municipalities, at which the quantity of food or money
was handed out in proportion to rank, not need.^32 The impoverished may
have resented this principle, even as public event after public event imprinted
it in the communal consciousness.
If the advantages of high rank were conspicuous and real, so also were
the disadvantages of falling outside the circle of privilege. Under the
Republic, citizens had won legal protection against fl ogging, torture and
execution, and in general, against the arbitrary use of force by magistrates.
In the imperial age, these rights survived for a time; as is well known, they
were asserted by St. Paul on more than one occasion. However, as the
honestiores/humiliores distinction came to supersede that between citizens
and non- citizens, the privilege of exemption from corporal punishment
came to be reserved for honestiores , and in a parallel development, cruel
penalties associated with slaves were extended to the humble free. The dual-
penalty system, together with a differential evaluation of legal testimony in
accordance with rank, were formally enunciated in law by the end of the
second century, but must have long been practised by judges, for they were
deeply rooted in traditional, aristocratic values. Some decades before the
earliest reference in the extant legal sources to a formal honestiores/
humiliores distinction, the younger Pliny advised a provincial governor in
Spain to preserve ‘the distinction of orders and dignity’ in legal hearings,
because ‘if these distinctions are confused, nothing is more unequal than
equality itself’ ( Ep. 9.5).^33
Status
A Roman’s status was based on the social estimation of his honour, the
perception of those around him as to his prestige. Since statuses refl ect values