1. The privileged classes; 2. The curials; 3. The common people. I speak only of free men.
1. The members of the Senate, and all those who were entitled to bear the name of _clarissimi;_ 2. The officers of the palace; 3. The clergy; 4. The cohortal militia, a sort of _gendarmerie_ employed in the maintenance of the internal order of the State, and the execution of the laws; 5. The soldiers in general, whether included in the legions, or in the troops attached to the palace, or in the corps of barbarian auxiliaries.
The class of curials comprehended all the citizens inhabiting towns, whether natives or settlers therein, who possessed a certain landed income, and did not belong, by any title, to the privileged class. The common people were the mass of the inhabitants of the towns, whose almost absolute want of property excluded them from a place among the curials.
The privileged members of the first class were numerous, of various rank, and unequally distributed among the five orders of which it was composed; but that which was, in fact, the most important and most sought after of their privileges, that which alone was more valuable than all the rest, was common to the five orders which constituted this class--I mean, exemption from municipal functions and offices.
When we come to treat of the curials, you will learn what was the extent of these duties; but you must first understand clearly who were exempt from them.
1. The whole army, from the lowest _cohortalis_ to the _magister equitum peditumve;_
2. The entire body of the clergy, from the simple clerk to the archbishop;
3. It is an easy matter to define the two foregoing classes; but it is not so clear who were the members of the class of senators and _clarissimi_.
The number of the senators was unlimited; the emperor appointed and dismissed them at his will, and could even raise the sons of freedmen to this rank. All those who had filled the principal magisterial offices in the Empire, or who had merely received from the prince the honorary title belonging to those magistratures, were called _clarissimi_, and had the right, when occasion required, of sitting in the Senate. Thus the class of _clarissimi_ included all the functionaries of any importance: and they were all appointed and might be dismissed by the emperor.