ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the emergence of the label and of the closely related term class to designate a social, economic and political status. The working poor of England began to be called members of ‘the lower classes’ rather than just ‘the poor’ or members of ‘the lower orders’. The French and German languages soon imitated the English one, often replacing the terms etat and Stand with classe and Klasse. Nevertheless, for most of the 18th century the labouring and artisanal classes were often spoken of as a mass of ‘commoners’ or ‘common people’. The involvement, historically, of the study of Greece and Rome in the maintenance of socio-economic hierarchies is thus obvious in the very title Classics. A new species of gentry among the merchant sector bought land and wanted prestige and a high ‘class’. The working classes of London were given access to rowdy versions of canonical classical epic at their summer fairs.
