In the later Roman Empire, honestiores and humiliores emerged as two broad distinctions of social and legal status, those who had held the higher offices (honores) and humbler people.
[4] Those of senatorial and equestrian rank and those who had held an office at the level of decurion or higher possessed greater honors and therefore were honestiores.
[8] The granting of universal citizenship to all free inhabitants of the empire in AD 212 seems to have exacerbated the division between the upper and lower classes.
As the principles of citizen equality under the Roman Republic decayed, humiliores were increasingly subject to harsher legal penalties, such as corporal punishment or public humiliation, formerly reserved for slaves.
[9][10][11][12] Honestiores retained the rights that had been held by all Roman citizens, at least in theory, during the Republic, including freedom from corporal and capital punishment.