Inequality

My studies in Roman inequality aim to debunk the simple equation of wealth, political power and social status that underpins most modern scholarship of Roman society.

Wealth was distributed very unevenly in the Roman world. As a consequence, wealth concentrated at the top of the wealth distribution. For example, there were many more wealthy households compared to the small group of men who monopolised the political magistracies. These wealthy households outside the socio-political orders fuelled intense competition for junior political offices, while paradoxically strengthening the resilience of the Roman political system.

In my forthcoming monograph (Cambridge University Press, 2024), I present a new reconstruction of the distribution of wealth in Roman Italy. The reconstruction is based on an innovative combination of an economic model with ancient empirical data (mainly archaeological and epigraphic data). My model enables drawing the contours of the economic elite, revealing it much larger size compared to the social and political elites. By challenging these long-held assumptions, the book offers fresh perspectives on the complexities of wealth and power in ancient Rome.

Related publications

Danon, Bart. Wealth, Office and Rank in Roman Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Danon, Bart. “Senators and senatorial wealth at Pompeii: Reconstructing the local wealth distribution.” In The Uncertain Past, edited by Myles Lavan, Daniel Jew, and Bart Danon, 93–134. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.