Social Class in Ancient Rome

Owning wax death masks of one's magisterial ancestors (imagines) was a privilege of rank, as Barbara McManus explains in her page on Roman Social Class. Moving into the higher rank social categories was very difficult. Among other qualifications, a senator had to have a million sesterces (250,000 denarii) and the next highest social class, the equestrian, had to have 400,000 sesterces. James S. Jeffers, in Greco-Roman World of the New Testament, provides an approximate conversion guide for these figures to U.S. dollars. He estimates one denarius as the amount a laborer would have earned in a day -- approximately $50 U.S. That means a senator had to have $12,500,000 and a knight, $5,000,000.
Ancient Rome