 in ancient rome, the plebs was the general body of free roman citizens who were not patricians, as determined by the census. shopkeepers, crafts people, and skilled or unskilled workers might be plebeian (; ).richard c. beacham, the roman theatre and its audience, p.14-15, harvard university press, 1991 from the 4th century bc or earlier, some of the most prominent and wealthy roman families, as identified by their gens name, were of plebeian status (see roman naming conventions). literary references to the plebs, however, usually mean the ordinary citizens of rome as a collective, as distinguished from the eliteâa sense retained by "plebeian" in english. in the very earliest days of rome, plebeians were any tribe without advisers to the king. in time, the word - which is related to the greek word for crowd, plethos - came to mean the common people. == plebs in ancient rome == in latin the word plebs is a singular collective noun, and its genitive is plebis. the origin of the separation into orders is unclear, and it is disputed when the romans were divided under the early kings into patricians and plebeians, or whether the clientes (or dependents) of the patricians formed a third group. certain gentes ("clans") were patrician, as identified by the nomen (family name), but a gens might have both patrician and plebeian branches that shared a nomen but were distinguished by a cognomen, as was the case with the gens claudia. the 19th-century historian barthold georg niebuhr held that plebeians began to appear at rome during the reign of ancus marcius and were possibly foreigners settling in rome as naturalized citizens. in any case, at the outset of the roman republic, the patricians had a near monopoly on political and social institutions. plebeians were excluded from magistracies and religious colleges, and they were not permitted to know the laws by which they were governed. plebeians served in the army, but rarely became military leaders. dissatisfaction with the status quo occasionally mounted to the point that the plebeians engaged in a sort of general strike, a secessio plebis, during which they would withdraw from rome, leaving the patricians to themselves. from 494 to 287&nbsp;bc, five such actions during the so-called "conflict of the orders" resulted in the establishment of plebeian offices (the tribunes and plebeian aediles), the publication of the laws (the law of the twelve tables), the establishment of the right of plebeianâpatrician intermarriage (by the passage of the lex canuleia), the opening of 
Ancient_Rome British_society Social_classes_in_ancient_Rome Social_groups