ABSTRACT
The middle classes may be roughly equated with the legal term honestiores—less the honorati, the official aristocracy. The term honestiores, though it carried useful privileges, is nowhere exactly defined, but it certainly included decurions, civil servants and soldiers, and may be taken to have also covered the clergy and the liberal professions. The range of wealth and social status covered was very wide and overlapped at one end of the honorati and the other with the plebeii or commoners.
