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This article discusses the social relations of the Roman non-elite in two overlapping areas: the modes of behaviour that governed their communication and relations with each other; and the communal contexts in which such interaction often took place. The nature of the surviving evidence makes these tasks problematic and accounts for why they have been largely neglected by scholars to date. The article tries to reconstruct how the non-elite interacted by looking at two particular Pompeian sources: graffiti and some of the surviving examples of tavern art. The discussion concerns mainly male social relations but also looks at what the even smaller body of evidence reveals about female relations. The article describes the different modes of popular interaction, ranging from friendly support to competitive mockery. It examines the important part that skill, knowledge, wit, and sociability played in non-elite culture.

This paper looks at one particular group of non-élite tradesmen — barbers — to see what they can tell us about popular culture, primarily in the city of Rome in the early Empire. It begins by looking at the significance barbers had in wider cultural discourse. Grooming the hair sat under that difficult umbrella term, cultus, which related to all manner of adornment and refinement. A key question for the study of ancient popular culture is whether it is possible to see through this largely élite literary construction and discern something of the underlying realities of everyday life. The paper argues that some level of plausible reconstruction is possible, and outlines what characteristics can be discovered about non-élite life. But popular sociability in the barbershop raised concerns among élite writers, and the paper examines these as a way to understand the nature of the relationship between popular and élite cultures.

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