Roman plebeian
As a Roman plebeian you would be one of the many – living in a cramped flat, buying hot food from a street counter and, thanks to your ancestors’ strikes, holding rights the elite could not ignore.
Who the plebs were
Originally Roman society split into patricians, a closed group of old aristocratic families, and plebeians – everyone else among the citizens. Plebeians were not necessarily poor: some became very rich. But early on they were barred from priesthoods and top offices.
During the Conflict of the Orders, roughly 494–287 BCE, plebeians repeatedly staged a secession, withdrawing from the city en masse and refusing to serve in the army. They won their own officials, the tribunes of the plebs, who could veto magistrates; written laws, the Twelve Tables of around 450 BCE; access to the consulship in 367 BCE; and in 287 BCE the Lex Hortensia, making decisions of the plebeian assembly binding on all.
A flat in the insula
In imperial Rome, which may have had around a million inhabitants, most ordinary people rented rooms in insulae – apartment blocks often five or more storeys high. Ground floors held shops; upper floors got cheaper, smaller and more dangerous. Fires and collapses were common, and Augustus limited building heights to about 70 Roman feet, around 20 metres.
Few flats had kitchens, so people ate at street bars called thermopolia, with built-in counters holding jars of food; a beautifully painted one was excavated at Pompeii in 2020. Water came from public fountains, and toilets were often shared latrines.
Bread and circuses
From 123 BCE citizens in Rome could buy grain at a subsidised price, and from 58 BCE it was distributed free; under Augustus about 200,000 men received a monthly ration. The poet Juvenal mocked the people for wanting only bread and circuses, but for many families the grain dole and the free games were real lifelines in a city of insecure, casual work.
