Roman society was extremely rigid. By the first century, however, the need for capable men to run Rome’s vast empire was slowly eroding the old social barriers. The social structure of ancient ...

Patrician families made up the ruling class, meaning they were in jobs ... that up to 10 per cent of the population of the Roman Empire were enslaved people. They had no legal rights in ancient ...

which categorizes people by social position along with associated incomes. The result is a Gini coefficient. The Roman Empire scored 0.46 and Han China scored 0.48. On such a scale, the number "1 ...