146 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
demographic and other reasons, leaving open many places for new men in
the curial order.
What was the social origin of the new recruits into the urban aristocracies?
Two upwardly mobile groups are visible in the sources: soldiers and a
category of slaves. The success of a freeborn rural labourer, the harvester
from Maktar in Numidia who rose to the status of a councillor and
magistrate of his city, was highly exceptional.^52
Each year a few tens of thousands were recruited into the army, receiving
citizenship if it was lacking, on entry in the case of legionaries, and on
discharge in the case of auxiliaries. Those who survived their term of service
received ample discharge payment, which allowed them to set themselves up
as landowners and to qualify for the local council in an urban community
near the frontier. For the fortunate few who formed the offi cer class, the
army provided the means for more spectacular climbs in the hierarchy. Some
centurions were recruited directly from the propertied class, but most were
promoted from the ranks. With the centurionate came authority and an
income on a par with that of decurions. The minority of centurions who
then reached the rank of primuspilus received equestrian status and income,
and the opportunity for appointment to high equestrian procuratorships
and even (for perhaps one in a decade) to the great prefectures.^53
In the cities, slaves and ex- slaves had better prospects, paradoxically, than
the humble freeborn. Insofar as profi ts could be made in commerce and
manufacture, the more enterprising members of this group were well placed
to make them, their masters having given them the incentive, the degree of
independence, the initial capital and frequently the training that was
required. Moreover, the position of favoured slaves in wealthy households
opened up the possibility that they would be the benefi ciaries not merely of
working capital, but also of substantial legacies. Manumission, as well as
inheritance by birth, adoption and legacy among those of the same social
background, played a part in the wealth- transferring process. Epigraphic
evidence, supplemented by (hostile) literary sources, leaves no doubt that
local councils in the western provinces were regularly replenished from the
newly founded families of successful freedmen.^54
The possibility that such a group existed in the cities of the Greek East
cannot be ruled out because of lack of evidence. A letter of Marcus Aurelius
preserved in an inscription shows that both Athenian councils (the Areopagus
and the Council of 500) depended upon freedmen to fi ll up their ranks.^55 This
is a revelation for which the corpus of honorifi c and funerary inscriptions from
Athens (and all other Greek cities) left us totally unprepared. Greek names in
the East are ‘status neutral’, whereas in the Latin inscriptions of the West, they
frequently indicate servile origin.^56 Whatever the social background of the
upwardly mobile group we are envisaging, it may be assumed that they were
patronized by the men of property who constituted the urban aristocracies in
the East, as in the West. The controlled entry of new members into the propertied
class was a crucial element in the stability of the Roman system of inequality.