Slaves
For the Romans, slave ownership was a mark of status. Although lacking basic human rights, household slaves usually could expect a degree of affection from their masters. Owners might hire out slaves with special skills, allow them a share of the profits and ultimately buy their freedom; others could be freed as a reward for faithful service. Freed slaves automatically became citizens and by the end of the Republic, more than a few aristocratic Romans possessed slave ancestry.
Freedmen
The positioning of freedmen in the system of tribes and centuries was regulated by the censors, who in the years after the Second Punic War took alternating measures. In 189 BC the tribune 03Terentius Culleo carried the lex Terentia enrolling the sons of freedmen, the libertini, into the rustic tribes. It is unclear but it seems that in 179 BC those who had sons and land in a rustic tribe received the same privilege. In 169 BC the censors found that freedmen had been distributed among the urban tribes except for those with sons and land values at over thirty thousand sesterces (i.e. the first and second centuries’ property classes). The censors that year, 11Sempronius Gracchus and 14Claudius Pulcher, decided the freedmen who did not qualify would be confined to one of the urban tribes: a public drawing of lots put them in the Esquilina.
Farmers
Rome’s primary source of military power, its peasant farmers (the propertyless could not supply their own weapons and thus were exempt from military service), after spending many years at the frontline were forced to sell their lands to settle debts, or simply had them seized by the upper classes who were amassing large estates (latifundia) tended by slaves.
The first half of the second century BC saw the larger cities, especially Rome, expanding dramatically with the influx of dispossessed farmers and freed slaves. By 133 BC the population of Rome reached perhaps half a million. A substantial number of these newcomers secured work on a vast building programme, erecting temples, aqueducts and harbour works; all funded by the influx of huge sums of tribute from vanquished lands. However, many of the newcomers remained unemployed and created an idle, impoverished mob in Rome.
The pacification of Gallia Cisalpina opened the fertile lands of the Po Valley and the foothills of the Alps to large-scale agricultural development. Although agriculture dominated the economy, Rome’s new found wealth encouraged the Italians to undertake large commercial ventures. The state imported vast quantities of manufactured goods and food from Sardinia and North Africa. Weapons for the army and tools for agriculture came from Campania, along with naval and merchant ships. Meanwhile, the Campanian ports of Puteoli (=Pozzuoli) and Pompeii had emerged as flourishing trade centres.
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