Major social changes and dislocations accompanied the demographic shifts and economic development. Relations between rich and poor in Rome had traditionally been structured by the bond existing between patron and client. In the daily morning ritual of the salutatio, humble Romans went to pay their respects in the houses of senators, who were obligated to protect them. These personal relationships lent stability to the social hierarchy. In the 2nd century, however, the disparity between rich and poor citizens grew. While this trend increased the personal power of individual senators, it weakened the social control of the elite as a whole; the poor had become too numerous to be controlled by the traditional bond of patron and client.

Until the end of the 170s the impoverishment of humble citizens had been counterbalanced to some extent by the founding of colonies, because dispossessed peasants were given new lands in outlying regions. During the middle decades of the 2nd century, however, colonization ceased, and the number of dispossessed increased, to judge from the declining number of small landowners in the census. The problem created by a growing proletariat was recognized by a few senators. Gaius Laelius, probably during his consulship of 140, proposed a scheme of land redistribution to renew the class of smallholders, but it was rejected by the Senate.

Some of the dispossessed went to Rome, where, together with the increasing numbers of slaves and freedmen, they contributed to the steadily growing population. This density led to the miseries associated with big cities, which were exacerbated by the absence of regulation. By 200 bc the pressure of numbers necessitated apartment buildings of three stories. Constructed without a building code, these structures were often unsound and prone to collapse. Moreover, closely placed and partly made of wood, they were tinderboxes, ever ready to burst into flame. The population density also increased the vulnerability to food shortages and plagues. In 188 fines were levied against dealers for withholding grain, attesting to problems of supply. The 180s and 170s witnessed repeated outbreaks of plague. The state, which could use its power to increase the grain supply, was helpless against diseases. In general, the republican state developed few new institutions to manage the growing urban problems: until the reign of Augustus matters were left to the traditional authority of urban magistrates, who were unaided by a standing fire brigade or police force. Consequently, Rome held an increasing potential for social discontent and conflicts without a corresponding increase in means of control.

The family, regarded by Romans as a mainstay of the social order, also was affected by the wider economic and social transformations of the 2nd century bc. In the early republic the family had formed a social, economic, and legal unity. The woman generally married into her husband’s family and came under his legal authority (or that of his father if he was still alive), and her dowry merged with the rest of the estate under the ownership of the husband. The husband managed the family’s affairs outside the house, while the wife was custodian within. Marriage was an arrangement for life; divorces were rare and granted only in cases of serious moral infractions, such as adultery or wine-tippling on the part of the wife. The children of the couple were subject to the father’s nearly absolute legal powers (patria potestas), including the power of life and death, corporal punishment, and a monopoly of ownership of all property in the family. The father’s power lasted until his death or, in the case of a daughter, until her marriage. When the father died, his sons, his wife, and his unmarried daughters became legally independent, and all inherited equal shares of the family’s property unless otherwise specified in a will. The imperial authors idealized the early republic as a time of family harmony and stability, which was lost through the corruption of the later republic.

When family life emerged into the full light of history in the 2nd century bc, it had changed in significant ways. A form of marriage, commonly called “free marriage,” was becoming prevalent. Under this form, the wife no longer came into her husband’s power or property regime but remained in that of her father; upon her father’s death she became independent with rights to own and dispose of property. But she was not a member of the family of her husband and children and had no claim to inheritance from them, even though she lived with them in the same house. Because many women inherited part of their fathers’ estates, they could use their independent fortunes to exert influence on husbands, children, and people outside the house. In the same period divorce became far more common; moral infractions were no longer needed to justify divorce, which could be initiated by either side. Frequent divorce and remarriage went hand in hand with the separation of marital property. There is plausibility in the suggestion that these changes were brought on by a desire of the women’s fathers to avoid having their daughters’ portions of the larger family estates slip irrevocably into the hands of their husbands. Although the changes in law and practice were not motivated by any movement to emancipate women, the result was that propertied women of the late republic, always excluded from the public sphere of male citizens, came to enjoy a degree of freedom and social power unusual before the 20th century.

Slaves came to permeate the fabric of family life and altered relationships within the household. They were regularly assigned the tasks of child-rearing, traditionally the domain of the mother, and of education, until then the responsibility of both the father and the mother. Whereas children had acquired the skills needed for their future roles by observing their parents in a kind of apprenticeship, in wealthy houses sons and, to a lesser extent, daughters were now given a specialized education by slaves or freedmen. The management of aristocratic households was entrusted to slaves and freedmen, who served as secretaries, accountants, and managers. The wife was no longer needed as custodian of the household, though domestic guardianship remained an element in the idealization of her role. Later moralists attributed a decline in Roman virtue and discipline to the intrusion of slaves into familial relationships and duties.

Rome and Italy

During the middle republic the peoples of Italy began to coalesce into a fairly homogeneous and cohesive society. Polybius, however, does not give insight into this process, because, living in Rome, he too little appreciated the variety of Italian cultures under Roman sway, from the Gallic peoples in the mountains of the north to the urbane Greeks on the southern coasts. Other evidence, though meagre, nonetheless suggests several processes that contributed to the increasing cohesion.

First, the Romans built a network of roads that facilitated communication across Italy. As stated above, the first great road was the Via Appia, which was laid out by Appius Claudius Caecus in 312 to connect Rome to Capua. Between the First and Second Punic Wars roads were built to the north: the Via Aurelia (241?) along the Tyrrhenian coast, the Via Flaminia (220) through Umbria, and the Via Clodia through Etruria. Then, in the 2nd century, Roman presence in the Po valley was consolidated by the Via Aemilia (187) from Ariminum on the Adriatic coast to the Latin colony of Placentia and by the Via Postumia (148) running through Transpadane Gaul to Aquileia in the east and Genua in the west.

Second, internal migration—Italians moving to Rome and Romans being sent to Latin colonies throughout Italy—promoted social and cultural homogeneity. Some of these colonies were set alongside existing settlements; others were founded on new sites. The colonies re-created the physical and social shape of Rome; the town plans and architecture, with forums including temples to Jupiter, were modeled on those of Rome. The imposition of a Latin colony on the Greek city of Paestum in Lucania (273) entailed the implantation of a Roman-style forum in the centre of the existing city in a way that rudely intruded on the old sanctuary of Hera. The initial system governing the distribution of land to Latin colonists aimed to replicate the Roman social hierarchy differentiated by wealth: it is recorded of the colonists sent to Aquileia in 181 that the 3,000 infantrymen each received 50 iugera (31 acres), the centurions 100 iugera (62 acres), and the cavalrymen 140 iugera (86 acres). The unifying effect of the colonies is evident in Paestum’s notable loyalty to Rome during the Second Punic War.

Third, although Rome did not seek to govern Italy through a regular administration, it influenced local affairs through formal bonds of personal friendship (amicitia) and hospitality (hospitium) between the Roman elite and their local counterparts. Through these ties the leading men of Italy were gradually drawn into the ruling class in Rome. The most prominent example of the 2nd century is that of Gaius Marius of Arpinum, who, only two generations after his town had received full citizen rights, began his meteoric senatorial career under the patronage of the great Roman nobles, the Metelli.

Fourth, the regular military campaigns brought together Romans and Italians of all classes under the command of Roman magistrates. The Italian troops appear to have been levied in a fashion similar to the one used for the Romans, which would have required a Roman-style census as a means of organizing the local citizenries. In the absence of direct administration, military service was the context in which Italians most regularly experienced Roman authority.

Fifth, Rome occasionally deployed its troops in Italy to maintain social order. Rome suppressed an uprising of serfs in Etruscan Volsinii in 265 and a sedition in Patavium in 175. When the massive influx of slaves raised the spectre of rebellions across Italy, Roman troops were deployed to put down uprisings: in 195, 5,000 slaves were executed in Latin Setia; in 196 the praetor was sent with his urban legion to Etruria to fight a pitched battle in which many slaves were killed; and the praetor of 185 dealt with rebellious slaves in Apulia, condemning 7,000 to death. The later slave revolt in Sicily (c. 135–132) was not contained so effectively and grew to include perhaps 70,000. The slaves defeated the first consular army sent in 134; the efforts of two more consuls were required to restore order. The revolts, unusual for their frequency and size, are not to be explained by abolitionist programs (nonexistent in antiquity) nor by maltreatment. The causes lay in the enslavement and importation of entire communities with their native leadership and in the free reign given to slave shepherds who roamed armed around the countryside serving as communication lines between slave plantations. These uprisings made it clear that the social fabric of Italy, put under stress by the transformations brought about by conquest, had to be protected by Roman force.

While the exercise of Roman authority and force was sometimes resented by Italians, Rome’s power made its mores and culture worthy of imitation. The Latin language and Roman political institutions slowly spread. A request from the old Campanian city of Cumae in 180 that it be allowed to change its official language from Oscan to Latin was a sign of things to come.