Rome’s Economy

The Roman economic system was based of the classes of wealth the people had. Meaning what jobs you could get was based on how much wealth your family had when you were born. Now, in Rome there wasn’t really a middle class, people who are doing well but not as good as the really rich people, there was only the really rich people (the patricians), the poor people (the plebeians), and the slaves (the slaves). If you were born to a very wealthy patrician family you had a few options. You could rise quickly through the military or become a politician, and becoming a banker was a highly profitable business, particularly since the bankers could take the man he’s loaning to and the same man’s family as slaves to be sold or used. But if you were a very well educated patrician you could become a doctor or other high standing job that required high intelligence like being one of Romes famous architects. If you were a Plebeian, however, your not going to be able to make a lot of money unless you somehow manage to become fast friends with a patrician, which is unlikely since most patricians look down on plebeians distastefully. Despite this you could still make a living for your family by becoming any one of a hundred things that help life get on. Some of the more prominent examples of these are bakers, farmers, craftsmen who made furniture, and shopkeepers, though there are many more. At the bottom of the food chain there’s the slaves, often made slaves because they failed to pay up on a loan or because they stole from their soon-to-be master, and as a slave you can have very differing lifestyles, depending on the master. If it’s a patrician who has you as a slave you’ll probably live a very nice life as their unpaid servant, because you’ll get a sleeping area in the patricians house which is always pretty nice, and you’ll only have to do the dishes, clean the house and do any menial task they give you, which is rarely life threatening. But as a plebeian’s slave you’ll have to do particularly unpleasant work and you have to live with them in their small home. But the worst possibility for a slave is if they get sold to the Empire for labor, because you’ll then have to constantly work on building roads, palaces, aqueducts and any other building project. There’s also the chance you’ll have to work in the mines, which is horrible because you’ll probably be crushed by the earth, or suffocate because of the lack of air. So life in Rome was really dependent on what class you’re born to, meaning it was pretty depressing for plebeians and some slaves.