Plebs

In ancient Rome, the plebs was the general body of free Roman citizens who were not patricians, as determined by the census. From the 4th century BC or earlier, known as commoners or part of lower social status

Literary references to the 'plebs', however, usually mean the ordinary citizens of Rome as a whole, as distinguished from the elite—a 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.

Plebeians 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.

Plebs (genus)

Plebs is a genus of spider previously considered part of several other genera in the Araneidae family of orb-weaving spiders. In 2012 a taxonomic revision suggested that this was a distinct genus of closely related spiders. Genetic evidence supports the idea that this monophyletic genus evolved in Australia and through subsequent movements spread into parts of Asia and Pacific islands.

There are a total of 22 species in the genus. Seven are found in Australia, thirteen in Asia and, one endemic to New Caledonia and one endemic to Vanuatu.

References

Plebs (TV series)

Plebs is a British television series broadcast on ITV2. It was first broadcast in March 2013, and is produced by Tom Basden, Caroline Leddy, Sam Leifer and Teddy Leifer. It stars Joel Fry, Tom Rosenthal and Ryan Sampson, who play young residents of ancient Rome. The format has been compared to The Inbetweeners, Up Pompeii and Blackadder. The first two episodes were shown on 25 March 2013.

On 20 March 2015, it was announced that the show had been renewed for a third series.

The style is contemporary and anachronistically uses modern language especially by the character Stylax.

The series uses predominantly reggae music during all the opening and closing titles and during each episode as background music.

Premise

"When in Rome do as the Romans do"- Ancient Rome is traditionally imagined as the home of emperors and senators, generals and gladiators, and a dignified theatre of pomp and ceremony. Plebs follows the lives of three desperate young men from the lower classes as they try to participate in sexual intercourse, hold down jobs and climb the social ladder in the big city. Two are free men: Marcus (Rosenthal) and Stylax (Fry), who work in a scriptorium in the company of a female manager, Flavia (Doon MacKichan), the water-carrier Aurelius (Tom Basden), and communications officer Claudius (Adrian Scarborough); the third leading character, Grumio (Sampson), is their lazy slave with an attitude problem. Marcus and Stylax live next door to two Britons, Cynthia (Colquhoun), an aspiring actress, and her slave Metella (Bewley).