In the Roman Empire what were the roles & responsibilities of 'Lords' and those who serve them?

Question

Does the term 'Lord' even apply in this time period? I need to know what someone in the context of the Roman Empire would have thought when told to honor someone as 'Lord'. Would they think of Cesear? Some other local governance? What would they believe a 'Lord' required of them? What would they believe a Lord afforded them? Anything? Is there some website that can help me with this?

Answer 1

Christopher B's answer is the most convincing.

Answer 2

Lords were during the Feudal years of Medieval Europe, Lords were the rich elite who were minature kings, they usually ruled large amounts of land and worked closely with the church.

They had people working for them... but they would not concider him a god, just a caregiver

people worked for lords, went to war with their lords and died for the lords...

Answer 3

No, the term "lord" is a medieval construct; the term "patrician" is roughly the equivalent which is proper for Ancient Rome.

The Patricians were an elite body in Ancient Rome, and were accorded special status; they also sat as members of a legislative body, the Comitia Centuriata, the main legislative body, which was divided into 193 voting centuriae (centuries).

Ancient Roman society was divided into two classes: Patricians and Plebeians; the Patricians were the upper class, and the Plebeians were the common people. Originally this was constructed around worship of the gods, with the Patricians being the priestly class, who were thought to be better suited to talk to the gods. Over time, they evolved into an aristocracy all their own, with special governmental duties, as noted above. As the centuries wore on, however, the Plebeians also rose in status and attained wealth and positions of their own. By the the third century (AD), the Patrician class had largely faded, and the term was little more than an honorific.

Answer 4

The term "lord" applies to the Roman Empire, but in a different ways than you might imagine. It was used in different ways at different times. The Latin word "Dominus" means lord, and it was the usually term slaves applied to their masters. So a lord would be, to a slave, one's owner.

So the position of honor you referred to is that of a master over a slave. The word "dominus" is derived from "domus," which means house. Therefore a "dominus," literally, means ruler of the house. A slave would believe a lord required them to do all that was asked, whether it was manually labor, household work, and even sexual favors (a reoccurring theme in Roman literature that deals with slavery). The lord didn't really afford them anything, except maybe the ability to buy their freedom if they saved up some money (slaves could get tips for helping people do stuff). The dominus would have had the responsibility of making sure the slaves were not mistreated (that would make the owner look bad) and that the household remained well taken care of. This responsibility often fell to the woman of the house, who the slaves would have called "domina." There are a lot of good websites out there on slavery in the Roman Empire, you just have to look.

Romans would not think of the Caesar as "dominus" until about the 4th Century. Before that, the Caesar was known as the "princpes", something along the lines of "first man." Non-slave Romans were very proud of the fact that they were "free," and would have disliked any term that made it seem like they were not. But as the power of the Emperors grew and the Empire became more autocratic, some emperors, like Diocletian, took the title "dominus et deus," or Lord and God. From the reign of Diocletian on, the Roman Empire enters the phase known as the "Dominate" where the Emperors had a lot of power and were seen as the "Lord". When Christianity was adopted, the God part was dropped, but the Emperor remained the Dominus, and became, instead of a god, the one God's direct authority on earth.

With the rise of Christianity, "dominus" also took on another meaning. It was one of the primary terms used to refer to God. Since the Catholic Church maintained the use of Latin for centuries after the fall of Rome, this usage is the longest lived. And it has also translated into English, as many refer to God in English as "Lord."