To subcategorize the citizens into groups signifying seniority and dictating levels of access.

At the top of the hierarchy will be the Patricians. In Ancient Rome the patricians were those families they could supposedly trace their ancestry back to one of the original Senators of Romulus’ Senate at the foundation of the kingdom. These were the most August families in the city with ambitions to put men into high office in every generation. For centuries the higher offices were relegated to patricians, they made up the jurors for the courts, and were the priests and other important positions. Over time most positions would be opened up to plebs but the prestige of the patricians remained. All non-patricians were “plebeians”, it was as simple as that, it didn’t signify economic standing, indeed by the late republic plebeians were some of the richest families in Rome... they were rich enough that a desire to marry into the wealth of the growing business class drove a lot of the liberalization of the constitution that opened up higher offices and things to non patricians to the point the distinction was mostly social.

Until 212AD Roman citizenship was a privilege they was slowly extended outward from the city. Some of the political upheaval of the first half of the century BC was provoked by some factions wanting to extend Roman citizenship to the Italian allies of central Italy which were at that point still not citizens... throughout the entirety of the republic a large portion of the imperial era the vast majority of Roman subjects were not citizens and were categorized as Peregrinii. This class of people were granted generally the same legal protections as Roman citizens, but were excluded from service in the legions and paid taxes, they still ruled over their own local municipalities but they were essentially 2nd class citizens.

There’s some background... now for our purposes:

Patricians

Patricians will be all current and former Senators. Senators need to be removed for one reason or another.... inactivity, eligibility, retirement, ect. We can’t have an infinitely large Senate, but it’s also a shame to remove people implying a post of trust and access.... so patricians will remain with access to the Senate as council and will essentially be non-voting Senators. It also will allow the elevation of some enterprising citizens to view the Senate without actually elevating them to a Senator.

It’s already a role in discord and used for this already, we can use it to limit access to other channels and maybe control things in game...

Equites

All normal citizens... probably not an additional role on discord.

Plebs

This is a role to be created for all of our new friends we are still bringing onboard and don’t entirely trust yet. In game this means they are probably not on the spqr_snitches network nor be moderators in the other groups. On discord they’ll probably be restricted to only a few channels.

Citizens will be elevated above the rank of pleb by the authorities in a case by case basis based on any number of criteria including Home ownership... contribution... activity... ect.

Peregrini

These are essentially all of the “honorary citizens” that are practically citizens in-name-only. The role will be to restrict access to some citizens channels we don’t want just every foreigners to see while still allowing for honorary citizens...

They’ll remain peregrini until such a time they become residents and are citizens in a more tangible way.