Quick questions on Social structure of Pompeii and Herculaneum: HSC Ancient History

Roman society was divided by legal status. Free-born citizens (ingenui) held full rights. Freed slaves (liberti, libertini) had limited rights and were bound to their former master as patron. Slaves (servi) were legally property.

Pompeii's decurions (ordo decurionum) numbered around 100 free-born adult male citizens of property. They elected the annual magistrates: two duoviri iure dicundo (judicial duumvirs) and two aediles (responsible for markets, streets, public buildings). The cursus honorum at municipal level ran aedile to duumvir, with the quinquennial duumvir (every fifth year) carrying out a census.

Roman women were excluded from formal political office but could hold significant public influence. The clearest evidence is Eumachia, public priestess of Venus and patroness of the fullers' guild. The Building of Eumachia on the east side of the Forum (early 1st century AD) was financed by her; the dedicatory inscription survives. The fullers erected a statue of her with the inscription "Eumachiae L(uci) f(iliae) sacerdoti publicae fullones" ("the fullers to Eumachia, daughter of Lucius, public priestess").

Freedmen could not hold formal magistracies but could become Augustales, priests of the imperial cult. The Augustalia at Herculaneum is well preserved, with its painted frescoes of Hercules and Achelous; its inscription commemorates the founding by two brothers, the Augustales A. Lucius Proculus and A. Lucius Iulianus.

Slaves (servi) were legally property. The evidence for slaves at Pompeii and Herculaneum is widespread but fragmentary.

The 1980-1982 discovery of 340 skeletons in the Herculaneum boat sheds transformed scholarship on the population. Pre-1980 scholarship assumed most inhabitants escaped; the skeletons proved many did not. Sara Bisel's (1987) anthropological study found a mixed population by age, sex, social class, and health.

A libertus is a freed slave; an ingenuus is free-born. The legal distinction matters for office-holding.

The 340 Herculaneum skeletons (Bisel 1987, Lazer 2009) are central to social history and are routinely asked about.

Eumachia is the exception, not the rule. Most Roman women had no public role. State this.

Cellae meretriciae are widespread. Beard cautions against using one site to represent the whole.