An incentive for research on the social history of Rome in the period of the Empire is the large number of sources and diverse types available, thus making it possible to analyse the social phenomena occurring not only within large groups but even in small local communities. This analysis allows us to track the changes in their makeup, the mechanisms of social change or declassing, and the social policy of individual emperors, but also to observe the ways in which the members of each community emphasised their own status and prestige. We know that having a specific social status and the associated prestige translated into various types of behaviours and positions emphasising the position of the individual in question. It is very useful to recognise and classify these in order to better understand the social function of both these elements and to identify the values which they symbolised. They also make it possible to point to the factors that were the cause of these social changes and dictated their speed and direction.

The multitude of ways of demonstrating one's status and social prestige in each society means that they need to be analysed and described in detail. This is a field of research that has long been known to sociologists, but has only recently become a subject for historians of antiquity. These studies also brought certain results deserving of closer attention. We can find a presentation of the diverse issues related to the question of manifesting a status and social prestige in Roman society in the newly published book Social Status and Prestige in the Graeco-Roman World, which contains contributions from the participants of an international conference organised by Annika B. Kuhn, which took place in Munich in October 2012.

Most of the 16 articles included in the volume concern the period of the early Empire, while just four refer to later times (cf. C. Davenport, Inscribing Senatorial Status and Identity, A.D. 200–350, pp. 269‒289; B. Sirks, Status and Rank in the Theodosian Code, pp. 291‒302; U. Ehmig, Servus dei und verwandte Formulierungen in lateinischen Inschriften, pp. 303‒314; R. Haensch, Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier: Der Gebrauch der Demutsformel ‘δοῦƛος θεοῦ’ in den Kirchenbauinschriften der spätantiken Patriarchate Antiochia und Jerusalem, pp. 315‒339).