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Summary

Rural patronage is likely to have been widespread in defining social relationships in the countryside, to judge by the evidence from the later empire and by modern Mediterranean studies. To the modern historian the élite Romans' perception of their social order seems incomplete, unsatisfactory and self-serving. The hierarchy and legitimacy of the ordines, and the privileges accorded them, were accepted as self-evident, with no thought given to how the Roman conception of the social order was projected and legitimated outside its centre. For members of the élite of the Roman empire, men like Aelius Aristides and Dio, the empire's social order was largely unproblematic. Elite imperial authors believed wealth to be a vital constituent of a Roman's standing. The economic and social structures in the towns were more conducive to upward mobility. By the end of the second century, however, men from the provinces came to dominate in the senatorial and equestrian ordines.

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28 - Status and patronage

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28 - Status and patronage

Summary