Plebeiate

Those writers, on the other hand, who take a more aristocratic view of early institutions, and consider the ceorls as an essentially inferior class, would look upon "commendation" as their original and necessary condition. The Roman plebeiate is of course an argument for the latter view.

In the old life of the pagus and the gens, the weaker sought protection of the stronger by a willing vassalage, which ripened, when the state was formed, into the Plebeiate which had its origin in clientship.

I propose that this ordo was a stratified and competitive hierarchy, a network with multiple interacting and context-specific hierarchies (clan, patriciate, plebeiate, age, sexual status, social position, sacerdotal public office, wealth etc.) […]