ABSTRACT
This paper has two purposes: first to analyse major changes in the social structure of Roman society during the later Roman Republic (200–31 B.c.). In this period, rapid expansion through conquest brought about a tremendous influx of wealth and repeated civil wars; finally the oligarchic Republic was replaced by a monarchy supported by a subordinate aristocracy, a professional army, and by an emergent bureaucracy. The second aim is to conceptualize some of these changes in terms of structural differentiation: this is the process by which an institution, previously charged with several overlapping functions, develops in such a way that these functions are taken over by other more specialized institutions. In this sense we can trace in present-day industrializing societies, for example, the emergence of specialized economic institutions and of a formal educational system, whereas previously such economic and educational activities were typically embedded in family organization. The concept of structural differentiation has been used notably by Smelser (1963), and by Eisenstadt (1964) in his analysis of historical bureaucratic societies. My own analysis owes a lot to both, and is, as the subtitle indicates, an attempt to see the changes which took place in Roman society during the Republic in the context of its evolution to a bureaucratic empire after 31 B.c.
