Social status and the prestige associated with it played a crucial role in Graeco-Roman society
constituting the basis for social stratification and shaping a complex web of social political
economic and cultural relations. The sixteen papers assembled in this volume take a fresh look
at the study of social status and prestige in antiquity and discuss a variety of key aspects
and issues of the topic including the formation and legal definition of status categories and
hierarchies the dynamic interrelationship between status and prestige manifestations of
status dissonance and social nonconformity the role of prestige as a resource of political
power and the representation and display of status through the media of honorific inscriptions
funerary monuments status symbols and prestige goods. The volume covers a broad geographical
and chronological scope which stretches from Roman Italy to the Greek East over the period from
the early principate to late antiquity.
