Plebs rule!

Momentarily banish thoughts of policemen on duty at the House of Commons, and picture a Roman pleb. You will probably visualise a toothless peasant howling for ‘bread and circuses’ (i.e. chariot races), and rioting if refused. But if you were then told that the Roman statesman Cicero and Caesar’s rival Pompey the Great were both plebs, you might reconsider; even more so if you were to discover that the plebs were involved in shaping some of the most dramatic events in the ancient world.

For Romans, the term ‘plebeian’ took them right back to the foundation of Rome in, as they calculated, 753 bc. Rome was an agricultural society. Wealth was expressed in the size of one’s land holdings and in the number of people who owed their livelihood to you, from family retainers to farm-workers and slaves. It was from the wealthiest of such families that the first king Romulus drew his circle of 100 advisers.