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").

Roman society was held together vertically by patrocinium (patronage) as much as it was divided horizontally by legal status. When a slave was freed, the act created not independence but a continuing legal and social bond: the freedman remained a client of his former owner, now his patron, owing him obsequium (formal deference and respect) and, in many cases, contracted operae (days of labour or service agreed at manumission). Patrons in turn were expected to protect and advance their clients' interests.

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.