opportunities to make a living, and even to achieve a certain scandalous distinction, conflicted with a social disapproval that was itself, as we should expect, shaped
by that essential tool of a dominant class, moral hypocrisy. An early-fourth-century law on adultery took it for granted that the mistress of a tavern need not have
sexual relations with the male clientele, while the serving-maids would normally be expected to, and so, unlike their mistress, were exempt from accusation as being
'unworthy of the cognizance of the laws'; and the same assumption was applied to women of the stage, whose immorality was held, again in Christian legislation of
the fourth century, to preclude their returning to their profession after baptism. The social role of the woman was dominant, above all, in the home and in the day-to-
day upbringing of children. The most intimate, if not the most endearing portrayal of this relationship, as of many other aspects of provincial family life, is
Augustine's description of his mother Monica in the Confessions. It was not exclusively as an expression of personal affection, but of the normal patterns of family
life in ancient cities, that Augustine's relations with his mother were so intense, and with his father so formal and distant by comparison.
A distinction in Roman society instantly recognizable through fundamental legal and social distinctions was that between slave and free. It is a truism hardly worth
asserting, that Roman society was in some sense dependent on slave labour. But in what sense? One of the most important facets of the social and economic history
of the Empire as opposed to the Republic is the declining rate of slave importation, the servile population being now to a far greater extent (one would not say
entirely, in view of the evidence for the continuance of the slave trade under the Empire) maintained by reproduction among those who were already of this status,
through what were in effect recognized as slave marriages. The effect of this is that the function of slavery in the Empire evolved within a wider social and
economic pattern and was not imposed upon it.
In whatever occupational milieu we find ourselves-among shopkeepers, building workers, members of collegia-we encounter a mixed population of slave, freedman,
and free citizen. By a senatusconsultum of A.D. 52-introduced to the Senate by Claudius as the idea of his freedman Pallas-free women who entered into permanent
relationships with slaves were themselves reduced to that status if the master was unaware of the relationship, or to that of freedwoman if he was aware and had
given his consent. Though sometimes viewed as a socially oppressive measure, the senatusconsultum is more interesting to the historian for the situations it entitles
him to visualize, of stable marital relationships freely undertaken between men and women of different legal status, but similar occupational groups, living (no
doubt) in similar social conditions and in situations where the master might not know what was going on. The woman might find her legal status affected, but her
marriage took her into the social network and protection afforded by the house to which her husband belonged; and in those frequent cases where the slave husband
worked independently of his master, or under only indirect supervision, she might find her way of life little changed. Tacitus wrote of the disorder arising in Rome
during the Civil War of A.D. 68 as affecting in opposite ways the stable part of the people connected with the great houses, and the spectacle-loving mob and the
worst of the slave population. The first group, including by implication the 'better sort' of the slave population, welcomed the end of the reign of Nero and the
prospect of better things to come; the second, used to Nero's extravagances, regretted his end, and, fearing the worst and fed on rumour, aggravated the general
instability.
The social relations, expressed through various forms of munificence, between the great houses of Rome (and so, on a lesser scale, in all cities of the Empire) and
their dependants, and between the Emperor and his special clients, the people of Rome, provided a common interest for sectors of society that ought, on any rational
calculation of economic advantage and disadvantage, to have been irrevocably opposed to each other. Yet this was only the tangible expression of the more
extensive moral and legal relations between 'client' and 'patron' upon which ancient society was built. The failure of societies in which such inequalities are rampant,
extreme, and blatant to the eye, to articulate their differences in terms of class conflict is a tribute (if that is the word) to the strength and flexibility of the relations
between classes which can be summed up in the word 'paternalism': the art of extending social benefits and alleviating the effects of misfortune while enhancing the
prestige and moral worth of the giver of the benefits, and thereby reinforcing rather than undermining the existing social structure. There were of course other means
of 'alleviating the effects of misfortune', and it would be hard in conclusion to imagine a more vivid expression of the sheer variety of social relations and
vicissitudes of human experience of which the historian must take account, than some questions envisaged on a late-third-or early-fourth-century papyrus as
appropriate for putting to an oracle (the numbers are given on the papyrus):
- Shall I get my pay? ... 74. Shall I be sold up? ... 78. Am I to get leave? 79. Shall I get the money? ... 82. Is my property to be proscribed? ... 85. Am I to be sold
as a slave? 86. Shall I go into exile? 87. Shall I go on an embassy? 88. Am I to become a town councillor? 89. Is my escape cut off? 90. Shall I be separated from my
wife? 91. Am I under a spell? ... (Oxyrhynchus Papyri, No. 1477)