Social change?

[LCorneliusScaeva]

I have a poster that's a timeline of Roman history. During the period around early 160's AD through early 180's AD there is a bar on the timeline labeled 'Social Change'. There are other bars at other positions on the timeline label things like 'Cival Wars', 'Consolidation of the Empire', etc. I can figure out what they refer to, but I don't know what the 'Social Change' bar is refering to. Anyone know?

Thanks

[M. Demetrius]

Well, for starters, since we don't have your timeline, could you supply the years that the Social Changes occured? That might get you a better answer. :wink:

<edited in: Well, so you did. And my brain was evidently on some other task. Sorry, sometimes I do that. Forgive me?>

[LCorneliusScaeva]

Well, for starters, since we don't have your timeline, could you supply the years that the Social Changes occured? That might get you a better answer. :wink:

I did. Early 160's AD to early 180's AD

[Epictetus]

Hmmm. That corresponds to the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161 - 180). He seems to have legislated safeguards for personal freedoms and the manumission of slaves. He ordered free newborns to be named quickly and registered, perhaps as a way to safeguard a freeman being claimed as a slave. He also gave new legislation on guardians to protect youngsters and worked on the state support for poor children (I believe started by Trajan). Marcus attended rigidly to the administration of justice and the law courts.

Perhaps this "social change" is basically relatively more personal freedom?

This kind of matches what he himself wrote:

It was through [Severus] that I... conceived of a society of equal laws, governed by equality of status and of speech, and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else.

Mediatations 1, 14.

[Carlton Bach]

I rather suspect this is one of those 'filler here' phrases. There is a lot of stuff going on in the second century, but not a whole lot of catchy dates for battles or treaties. That gives timeline maklers the opportunity to squieeze in a sidebar that describes developmemnts that are much broader in scope - the legal divide between honestiores and humiliores, slave legislation, the relative decline of the old latifundia system, the beginnings of the colonate, and a lot of other things we used to think we understood.

[Gluteus Maximus]

Maybe this is because, since Gibbon, the year 180 is regarded as the final year of the 'golden age' after which the Empire went into a 300 - year period of moribund decline. Not my take on it personally, but this perception persists.