Social Stratification

Abstract

In the first section of the chapter, are considered models of social stratification based on the function of social groups in society (occupations, estates and so on), only to discover their relative unimportance to the Byzantine social structure. Rather, the Byzantines stratified their society according to the degree of possession of economic and political capital. The Byzantine models were usually based on a binary opposition (such as rich–poor) which, even if valid, hardly described the complexity of society with all sorts of social groups in-between. Instead, it is necessary to identify a middle class to describe all the different, diverse social groups, such as merchants and artisans or soldiers and independent peasants, between the elite and the lower dependent classes. The chapter discusses the composition of each of the social groups: the differentiation between common soldiers and the officers who came from the elite; the divisions within the elite in terms of function (military and civil) and in terms of social power (higher and lesser); the composition and the occupations of the urban middle classes; and the social conditions in the countryside, including the status and obligations of the dependant peasants (the paroikoi).