play  rather than for example in fact  those legally consist of recognize  conflict increase decrease factor  these

It is hard to get any agreement on the precise meaning of the term "social class". In everyday life, people tend to have a different approach to (51)____ they consider their equals from that which they assume with people they consider higher or lower than themselves in the social scale. The criteria we use to "place" a new acquaintance, however, are a complex mixture of (52)____. Dress, way of speaking, area of residence in a given city or province, education and manners all (53)____. a part.

In ancient civilizations, the Sumerian, for example, which flourished in the lower Euphrates valley from 5 000 to 2000 B.C., social differences were based on birth, status or rank, (54)____on wealth. Four main classes were (55)____. These were the rulers, the priestly administrators, the freemen (such as craftsmen, merchants or farmers) and the slaves In Greece, after the sixth century B.C, there was a growing (56)____between the peasants and the landed aristocrats, and a gradual (57)____in the power of the aristocracy when a kind of "middle class" of traders and killed workers grew up. The population of Athens, (58)____, was divided into three main lass which were politically and (59)____distinct. About one-third of the total were slaves, who did not count politically at all, a fact often forgotten by those who praise Athens as the nursery of democracy. The next main group (60)____ resident foreigners, the "metics", who were freemen, though they too were allowed no share in political life. The third group was the powerful body of "citizens", who were themselves divided into sub-classes.

(From Social Classes)

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