In ancient Rome, the plebs was the general body of free Roman citizens who were not patricians,
as determined by the census. Shopkeepers, crafts people, and skilled or unskilled workers
might be plebeian. From the 4th century BC or earlier, some of the most prominent and
wealthy Roman families, as identified by their gens name, were of plebeian status. Literary
references to the plebs, however, usually mean the ordinary citizens of Rome as a collective,
as distinguished from the elite—a sense retained by "plebeian" in English. In the
very earliest days of Rome, plebeians were any tribe without advisers to the King. In
time, the word - which is related to the Greek word for crowd, plethos - came to mean the
common people.
Plebs in ancient Rome In Latin the word plebs is a singular collective
noun, and its genitive is plebis. The origin of the separation into orders is
unclear, and it is disputed when the Romans were divided under the early kings into patricians
and plebeians, or whether the clientes of the patricians formed a third group. Certain
gentes were patrician, as identified by the nomen, but a gens might have both patrician
and plebeian branches that shared a nomen but were distinguished by a cognomen, as was
the case with the gens Claudia. The 19th-century historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr held that
plebeians began to appear at Rome during the reign of Ancus Marcius and were possibly foreigners
settling in Rome as naturalized citizens. In any case, at the outset of the Roman Republic,
the patricians had a near monopoly on political and social institutions. Plebeians were excluded
from magistracies and religious colleges, and they were not permitted to know the laws
by which they were governed. Plebeians served in the army, but rarely became military leaders.
Dissatisfaction with the status quo occasionally mounted to the point that the plebeians engaged
in a sort of general strike, a secessio plebis, during which they would withdraw from Rome,
leaving the patricians to themselves. From 494 to 287 BC, five such actions during the
so-called "Conflict of the Orders" resulted in the establishment of plebeian offices,
the publication of the laws, the establishment of the right of plebeian–patrician intermarriage,
the opening of the highest offices of government and some state priesthoods to the plebeians
and passage of legislation that made resolutions passed by the assembly of plebeians, the concilium
plebis, binding on all citizens. Noble plebeians
During the Second Samnite War, plebeians who had risen to power through these social reforms,
began to acquire the aura of nobilitas, "nobility", marking the creation of a ruling elite of
nobiles that allied the interests of patricians and noble plebeians. From the mid-4th century
to the early 3rd century BC, several plebeian–patrician "tickets" for the consulship repeated joint
terms, suggesting a deliberate political strategy of cooperation. Although nobilitas was not
a formal social rank during the Republican era, in general a plebeian who had attained
the consulship was regarded as having brought nobility to his family. Such a man was a novus
homo, a "new man" or self-made noble and his sons and descendants were nobiles. Marius
and Cicero are notable examples of novi homines in the late Republic, when many of Rome's
richest and most powerful men—such as Lucullus, Crassus, and Pompeius—were plebeian nobles.
Some or perhaps many noble plebeians, including Cicero and Lucullus, aligned their political
interests with the faction of optimates, conservatives who sought to preserve senatorial prerogatives.
By contrast, the populares or "people's party", which sought to champion the plebs in the
sense of "common people", were sometimes led by patricians such as Julius Caesar and Clodius
Pulcher. United States military academies
In the U.S. military, Plebes are freshmen at the U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Naval Academy,
Valley Forge Military Academy, the Marine Military Academy, the U.S. Merchant Marine
Academy, Georgia Military College, California Maritime Academy and the Philippine Military
Academy. British Empire
Early public schools in the United Kingdom would enroll pupils as "plebeians" as opposed
to sons of gentry and aristocrats. In British, Irish, Australian, New Zealand
and South African English the back-formation pleb, along with the more recently derived
adjectival form plebby, is used as a derogatory term for someone considered unsophisticated
or uncultured. See also
Bread and circuses Capite censi
Plebe summer Plebeian Council
Proletariat Roman Republic
Toff The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising by Gunter
Grass. Notes
References Jackson J. Spielvogel. World History: Journey
Across Time. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Scott Wertsching. What is a Pleb?. Rome: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill.
External links Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,
article Plebs Livius.org: Plebs
Texts on Wikisource: "Plebeians". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921.
"Plebeians". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920. "Plebs". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911.