ABSTRACT
The Romans divided the population into legal categories. The population of the empire was divided into Romans, Latins and non-Romans. Romans were divided into groups which we call ‘orders’, partly to differentiate these categories from social classes (a division broadly based on wealth). A slightly simplified version of these social orders is represented in Table 10.1. Latin status was an intermediate status between non-Romans and Romans. Latin communities in the empire had a constitution modelled on that of Rome, though it is unclear whether there was a significant number of Latin communities in the imperial period. Junian Latins were rather different and will be discussed below. The non-Roman communities were those cities and peoples of the empire who had not been given Roman or Latin status. These communities continued to be governed by their local traditions and showed considerably more variation in social organisation than is possible to represent here. Progressively, Rome came to influence the constitutions of many of these communities and they developed institutions more similar to those of Rome.
