Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
Origins of the Class Structure in Pre-Etruscan Rome, C. 750 B.C.c. 550 B.C.
Author(s): Lorne H. Ward
Source: Science & Society, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Winter, 1988/1989), pp. 413-440
Published by: Guilford Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40402910
Accessed: 18-10-2017 04:23 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Guilford Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science
& Society
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Science sf Society, Vol. 52, No. 4, Winter 1988, 413-440
LORNE H. WARD
413
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
414 SCIENCE &f SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CLASS STRUCTURE 4 1 5
It is now usual to assume that the distinction arose chiefly by the operation of
common economic and social laws (Frank, 1959: 1, 1 1.). ... it was inevitable that
some men became lords of extended fields and persons of influence in the state,
while others were reduced to economic and political dependence upon them.
(Frank, 1914, 5.)
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
416 SCIENCE of SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CLASS STRUCTURE 4 1 7
1 As Carandini notes, the slave mode of production was "the most drastic separation of
producers from their means (of production) and products that history has known
before the modern expropriation of the yeomen" (Giardina and Schiavone, 1981, 250).
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
418 SCIENCE 6f SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CLASS STRUCTURE 4 1 9
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
420 SCIENCE 6f SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CLASS STRUCTURE 421
Such a society was still egalitarian in access to resources and subsistence needs;
skills and tool use were differentiated, however. Such a society might be said to
have specialization without classes. (Garner, 1977, 207.)
What cut the more finely woven class structure from the
rough, democratic whole cloth of the tribe were most likely two
2 By about 650 BC it appears the donkey or ass was being regularly used as a rough
measure of value in the barter system, and by 550 BC it had evolved into crude bronze
pieces or aes rude, as a proto-monetary medium of exchange (Kent, 1978, 9-20;
Crawford, 1974:1, 35-37; 1974:2, 591-593).
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
422 SCIENCE fcf SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CLASS STRUCTURE 423
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
424 SCIENCE sf SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CLASS STRUCTURE 425
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
426 SCIENCE 6? SOCIETY
4 Although the farmers' livestock and crops may have been originally mortgaged, as
population increased and average farm size shrunk, the agricolae needed everything
they produced to survive; there were no extra cattle or crop shares to pay back, so
eventually they either sharecropped the bigger owners' land or increasingly mortgaged
their own and their families' labor, a near-slave status known as the nexum (Girard,
1929; Westrup, 1947; Varro VII, 104-105).
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CLASS STRUCTURE 427
Yet the type of debt that has been described so far was likely
only one source of the dependent peasantry. The second and
eventually even more important source appears to have been the
surplus, overflow population, both from within the seven hill
society itself as well as from outside the immediate area. Once the
better ager had been divided up and even the lower quality,
marginal land further out taken over by surplus children, there
was little arable acreage left. The next generation of offspring
had no choice but to turn back inward and go to those better-off
5 At first, debts may have been paid off through a form of crop-sharing, either from the
farmer's own ager, or from acreage assigned to him on the landlord's nearby estate,
based on the amount of usura charged on the loan. As land and capital became scarce,
however, the interest rate appears to have repeatedly doubled from 8% to 16% on up to
33%, and it was these percentage shares of the crop that were likely paid to the creditor
(Stinchcombe, 1966, 182-190; Scullard, 1980, 82-83).
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
428 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
6 According to the Servian classification of citizen wealth, the smallest parcels of land
were about 1.25 acres per family, and though the first peasant-clients may have been
given more, as good acreage became scarce and the nobles wanted to insure an
economic dependency on them by their clientela as a reliable source of cheap, resident
labor, the acreage eventually shrank to between one and two acres (Livy I, 43; Frank,
1959, 20).
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CLASS STRUCTURE 429
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
430 SCIENCE fcf SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CLASS STRUCTURE 431
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
432 SCIENCE sf SOCIETY
8 It is not known what percent of the population was in the towns in non-agricultural
craft and trading occupations around mid-sixth century BC, but based on the study of
other early agrarian societies at a comparable stage of development, probably about
10% of the population or roughly 5,000 people were strictly urban, i.e., the ratio
between town and countryside was about ten familiae rustica to one familia urbana
(Lenski, 1966, 199-200, 246-266; Frank, 1959, 21).
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CLASS STRUCTURE 433
number of population,
class composition families population percent
a Since there were roughly 5000 town dwellers without land, 5000 had to be
subtracted from the total "middle-class" populace to get 36,750, the number
of farm people, which with one acre per person, approximately equaled their
total acreage. See footnote 8.
Sources: Brunt, 1971a, 13, 26-33, 190-195; Scullard, 1980, 63-68; Frank, 1959,
5-10, 20-25; Ogilvie, 1976, 58, 179; Beloch, 1926, 620.
37,000 acres (57 square miles) or some 83% of all arable land;
again see Tables 1 and 2 (White, 1970, 345-346; Brunt, 1971,
194; Frayn, 1979, 29, 57-92).
With the close, intense, small scale hoe-farming of the time,
most of these agricolae had enough land to support themselves
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
434 SCIENCE sf SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CLASS STRUCTURE 435
Conclusion
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
436 SCIENCE 6f SOCIETY
Sabines
southern
Etruria
I
S Nomentum
Veii J
' Caere C. Fidenae/^ ^^V
I ^O^^^^^^Ficulea '
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CLASS STRUCTURE 437
REFERENCES
Alfldi, A. 1963. Early Rome and the Latins. Ann Arbor: University of Mich
Press.
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
438 SCIENCE of SOCIETY
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
CLASS STRUCTURE 439
Maddin, Robert, James Muhly and Tamara Wheeler. 1977. "How the Iron Age
Began." Scientific American, 237:4 (October), 122-131.
Marx, Karl. 1976 (1867). Capital, Vol. I. New York: International Publishers.
Meyer, Eduard. 1924. Kleine Schriften, Vol. I. Halle: Niemeyer.
Momigliano, Arnaldo. 1963. "An Interim Report on the Origins of Rome."
Journal of Roman Studies, 53, 95-121.
Scribner.
Ogilvie, Robert M. 1976. Early Rome and the Etruscans. Atlantic Highlands:
Humanities Press.
Piganiol, Andr. 1916. Essai sur les origines de Rome. Paris: Fontemoing.
Plutarchus. 1914. Plutarch's Lives. Romulus, Publicla, trans. Bernadotte Perrin.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Radin, M. 1922. "II Secare Partis: The Early Roman Law of Execution Against a
Debtor." American Journal of Philology, 42, 32-48.
Randall-Mad ver, David. 1928. Italy Before the Romans. Oxford: Clarendon.
Rathbone, D. W. 1983. "The Slave Mode of Production in Italy." Journal of
Roman Studies, 73, 160-168.
Ridge way, William. 1907. Who Were the Romans? London: British Academy.
Rostovtzeff, M. 1960 (1927). Rome, trans. J. D. Duff. London: Oxford.
Scullard, H. H. 1980. A History of the Roman World from 753 to 146 BC. London:
Methuen.
Stavely, E. Stuart. 1983. "The Nature and Aims of the Patriciate." Historia, 32,
24-48.
Ste. Croix, G. E. M. de. 1981. The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World from the
Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests. London: Duckworth.
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
440 SCIENCE 6f SOCIETY
Munksgaard.
White, K. D. 1970. Roman Farming. New York: Cornell Uni
This content downloaded from 71.198.96.48 on Wed, 18 Oct 2017 04:23:03 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms