What Is Meant By Plebeian?

The word is derived from the Latin word 'plebeius' which means a citizen who was not part of any aristocratic patrician families. In the contemporary scenario, a plebeian is referred to as a person who does not belong to a respectable class or caste and is low in birth or rank. With respect to other comprehensions, plebeians were those people who were undistinguished, trite, mundane, ill mannered, lacking in imagination and vulgar.

The first overt division between the patricians and the plebeians first developed and accented in its loudness in the early part of the 5th century. The patricians were descendants of the 'patres', who were a body of advisors, who had the privilege to surround and remain with the early kings of Rome. Later on patricians ousted plebeians from public offices and all-important positions and reduced them to the rank of unwanted people. The situation exacerbated further while continuous wars and loss of trade practically left the poor plebeians desolate and helpless.

Later on the conditions improved for them, yet that the erstwhile dread of their situation remained stuck to their name like an endless nemesis.

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