Origins of the \'Hollywood\' Roman salute?

[tlclark]

There are dozens of ranks, but only a few classes, basically two, plebs and patricians, with equestrians being the middle ground between

That's not what Roman History 101 would tell you! Patricians were those families in the early Roman republic who used to make up senate and magistracies. The plebs was everyone else. When wealthy plebeians (yes, that is possible) wanted in, that caused a conflict between plebeians and patricians that lasted till the Lex Hortensia in 287BC. The tribunus plebis is the most obvious result of the redistribution of power.

Too true!, but I don't think it impacts my ideas that much. Presumably plebs in positions of power would adopt patrician manners/customs.

You could buy your way into the senate with as little as 100,000 sestercii which was a significant, but not outrageous sum. And many patricians who were denied the right to hold the tribunate changed their names (and thus tribes) to qualify for the powerful plebian offices. The best demonstration of the value of the plebs is that Augustus permanently assumes the tribune powers in 23 BCE.

But I think late republic politics is very complicated for just this very reason because social mobility becomes so fluid. By the time of the empire, many of the so-called patricians in positions of leadership were actually plebs that had acquired the patrician status by a combination of marriage, politics and outright buying it.

Class became less about birth, and more about politics, but I don't think they every gave up the notion of "class". The question is did native born patricians distinguish themselves from the noveau riche and upstarts? Would it even have mattered by the latter empire?

And getting back to the discussion, did the nouveau riche and recently elevated ranks of plebs adopt the customs and gestures of their new rank? I mean, isn't that the whole point of the Satyricon that this social mobility had created cultural chaos?

Let's look at this another way. If a newly minted officer whose parents had been plebs (or even freedmen!) used a patrician gesture, or adopted patrician manners, what did the native born patricians think of that? OR...did they NOT adopt the patrician gestures out of pride of their humble beginnings? (This latter example is common in American politics. Both Bush and Clinton's southern accents get THICKER on camera, which is sort of a reverse pretension.)

I don't know if a lot of this is relevant much past the early imperial period.

Fun to talk about though.