How the Roman ranking system actually worked

For otherwise healthy plebs in the Roman world, survival depended on four Fs: farming (the sole source of food and money), fighting, family and friends. Everything else that made life worth living meant having some degree of political control over your own existence, which could be summed up in a fifth F: freedom, or political equality. But the elite had little time for such goodwill towards men. For the plebs, there was the rub.

In the 20s BC Livy began writing a history of Rome from its foundation in 753 BC. It was first ruled by a series of seven kings (none actually Roman) who were finally thrown out as tyrants in 509 BC. During that period the plebs, summoned from their farms as necessary, were in almost constant conflict with surrounding tribes over possession of land, and Rome ended up about twice the size of its local rivals and with a formidable plebeian – but not standing – army.

It was at this point that Livy describes Rome’s rapid and rather unlikely transformation into a republic.

To summarize: the entire population was given a rank. At the top were patricians, men of high authority and extreme wealth (they owned vast land holdings), of whom 300 had been appointed as advisors to the kings. Then came equites, “cavalrymen,” also very wealthy (horses were the equivalent of Ferraris). Everyone else was a pleb, from those fairly rich and probably moving in the same circles as the top group, all the way down to the poorest of the poor. Slaves, perhaps 10 percent of the population, had no status.

Those rankings defined Romans’ role in the army, the tax they might pay and their place in the new political assemblies. Officials – consuls, praetors, etc. – were then appointed, mostly from the new law-making Senate of 600 patricians. What real power could the plebs exert in such a set-up? They had a say, via the assemblies, but the Senate made the laws. True, the plebs could in theory vote them down, but that required communal agreement, not easy when most were peasant farmers.

In 494 BC the crunch came, over the long-standing issue of plebeian debt and interest which, if not paid, could lead to prison and even slavery. Rome was thronged with protesting plebs who had lost everything fighting for Rome, when news came that the Volsci tribe were on the march. The call went out for the army to assemble. En masse, the plebs decided to strike: let the Senate do the fighting! Panic ensued, the Senate backed down, the Volsci were repulsed and the army was rewarded with booty.

Crisis over? Far from it. One Sicinius raised the stakes dramatically: all fighting men should abandon the city, camp out on the Sacred Mount three miles away and stay there until the problem was fully resolved. The Senate caved, and it was agreed that the plebs should appoint two inviolable plebeian tribunes, above the law – no patricians allowed – able to veto all legislation and protect the plebs against the power of the consuls.

That was the crucial first step that would, in time, after many more such initiatives, lead to the decisions of the plebeian assemblies having exactly the same force as those of the Senate. It would also enable Rome to unite the whole of Italy, defeat Carthage, grow an empire and lay the basis for our understanding the word republic: Latin res publica, “the property/business of the populus,” not of the elite. Equality at last!

Those republican principles lie behind modern democracy, i.e. that we the people possess the right, under the law, to run our own affairs; to outsource that running to freely elected officeholders with a mandate to serve our interests and not theirs; and to vote them in and out of office.

We in the West are extraordinarily fortunate to live in societies whose government is organized around principles so simple, but so fundamental to human freedom and happiness, which the Roman plebs fought so long to establish – and which the families of freed slaves would also enjoy.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 22, 2025 World edition.