In the modern world, when you meet someone, oftentimes one of the first descriptors you give about yourself besides your name is your job. It is a primary characteristic of the modern individual. Our jobs as construction workers, doctors, teachers, or as students represent a major part of our identity. As such, we are oftentimes only identified by a single employment. Say I’m a student who runs a gig walking dogs on the side, my identity defaults towards student. I have no idea why, but it may be due to employment being such a large part of identity that having multiple blows our minds a bit too much.

Interestingly enough, this was not the case in ancient Rome, at least not for everyone. For artisans, slaves, and standard workers, jobs were a major identifying characteristic. Most of these classes had only one job, and that job made a huge difference in their identity. Slaves’ identities were dominated by the fact that they were slaves, except for the minority of cases in which people sold themselves as slaves to the powerful in hopes of career progression. Workers and artisans were likewise very much dominated by their careers. Those who could afford a gravestone often decorated it with symbols of their trade, as it was a critical component of their life and identity.

The upper classes, on the other hand, did not identify themselves by career. Most wealthy Romans had assets and ventures in multiple industries. They were not picky and would do what they could to protect and nourish family wealth, even if it involved ventures into new industries. Oftentimes, they would make deals with their freedmen to help them run ventures where the profits would be split between the two. So, in addition to more personally managed businesses, many wealthy Romans had their hands in countless additional businesses through webs of freedmen. But this meant that wealthy Romans were more defined by their position and status than by their job, as they had many.

This provides an interesting antithesis to the modern world, where everyone is defined by their job, from the wage worker to the billionaire; employment dominates their identity. Whether it is a positive or negative, I cannot say, but it certainly is an interesting cultural phenomenon to think about.

Cover photo by Jaylan