Article suitable for older students

Commoners versus nobles

30th Dec 2014

Aztec/Mexica commoner alongside noble

Mexica (Aztec) society was largely divided into two main classes: commoners (macehualtin), like the figure on the left (C), and nobles (pipiltin), like the figure on the right (N). How did life differ for these two groups on a day-to-day basis? (Written/compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

COMMONERS
• Obliged to pay tribute, in kind and in the form of communal work
• Only received tribute payments if they succeeded in moving up from commoner status to noble
• Only merchants (pochteca) who had earned high status had the right to own state-run land
• Could only take on leading public positions if they had earned these by special merit
• Subject to less severe penal code/official punishments; common criminals could be executed, always in public
• Taught in the less strict telpochcalli school
• Subject to monogamy (only allowed one wife/husband)
• Could only enter royal buildings as cleaners or builders/repairers.

NOBLES
• Their work at the service of the state was considered equal in value to paying tribute; free from this obligation and from communal labour
• Received the benefits of tribute as payments either for their services to the state or for belonging to the ruling family
• Could own state-run lands known as pillalli
• Held the vast majority of public offices/positions
• Subject to a severe penal code, and liable to punishments for crimes such as prostitution that didn’t apply to commoners; subject to very severe punishments, given both to them as individuals and to their families; punishments for crimes were imposed in private
• Taught in the severe atmosphere of the calmécac élite school
• Could indulge in polygamy (allowed more than one wife/husband)
• Allowed to attend royal buildings.

Strict Aztec ‘sumptuary laws’ meant that -
NOBLES
• had exclusive right to own and wear semiprecious stones
• could own and use painted ceramic vases and other luxury goods
• could wear clothes made of cotton, sandals, etc.
• were allowed to carry and enjoy aromatic flower bouquets
• could eat the flesh of sacrificial victims
• were allowed to drink cacao
• could partake of mind-changing drugs. Whereas...
COMMONERS
• were only allowed to own and use plain pottery cups
• could only wear coarse cactus-fibre clothes
• could only wear sandals when travelling on roads
• weren’t entitled to enjoy flowers/sacrificial meat/cacao/drugs (see above).

COMMONER V NOBLE NAMES
’Names of commoners are frequently composed of a single nominal (noun) element, e.g. Yaotl (“Soldier”) or Xochitl (“Flower”), while those of the nobility tend to have two elements, one of which may be verbal, e.g. Chalchiuhnenetl (“Jade Doll”) or Xiuhtlatonac (“He Has Shone Like Turquoise”)’
(From Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs by Gordon Whittaker, 2021, p. 84).

NOTE: This feature is based on, and translated from, an extract from an article by Alredo López Austin (on our Panel of Experts) ‘La sociedad mexica y el tributo’, in Arqueología Mexicana, no. 124 (Nov-Dec 2013), pp 40-47. Many thanks, Alfredo!

Picture sources:-
• Photo of Aztec commoner statue by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Image scanned from our own copy of Primeros Memoriales by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Facsimile Edition, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1993
• Photo of image of cacao bags, detail from the Codex Kingsborough, British Museum, by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Photo of Aztec sandals - detail from a mural in the National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City - by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Image from the Florentine Codex (original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence) scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994.

Guess...

...roughly what percentage of the Aztec population were nobles?

Find out

In the Aztec language, Nahuatl, macehualtin (commoners) means ‘people who deserve [a rest]!’

Learn more about wearing shoes...Find out here what phrase was used to describe an Aztec commoner...

Comments (8)

Elimia

18th Mar 2025

Who writes these and responds to comments? Also if I were say a merchant how would I move up to noble

Mexicolore

We do! (The writer’s name is in the opening paragraph)
To answer your question, ‘though merchants could accumulate great wealth through their trade, they were never considered nobles, because they usually did not have a royal blood heritage’ (Manuel Aguilar-Moreno).

Nigel

19th Jun 2024

Were commoners/anyone allowed to climb the top of the Huēy Teōcalli (large step pyramid) in Tenochtitlan, or was it just priests, nobles, and people who were getting sacrificed?

Mexicolore

We believe it was very much restricted - as you’ve indicated yourself. We should add of course the warriors accompanying the sacrificial victims to the top...

Peter

8th Feb 2024

Thanks!!

Dave

24th Feb 2023

Thanks!

Soren

11th Mar 2021

This helped me with my assignment.

Sean

13th Oct 2020

I loved how you talked about several things about the Nobles and commoners but I think that you should have added some punishments given to them.

Tecpatzin

6th Jan 2020

I’m just wondering, did nobles work the land, or was it just the commoners? Did noblemen participate in ceremonial planting in the Chinampas zones? I mean, the commoners had to grow food for themselves and for the state but did people of a higher status attend their own personal gardens?

Mexicolore

No! In the words of Jacques Soustelle (‘Daily Life of the Aztecs...’) ‘There was no question of a Mexican noble working on the land like a “labourer or gardener”; the suggestion is that he should direct the exploitation of his estate’ - here he is commenting on the advice (documented in the chronicles) given to his sons by a Mexica nobleman. And Warwick Bray (‘Everyday Life of the Aztecs’) comments that ‘Noblemen were often given estates, complete with “mayeques” to work them...’ Mayeques were free men who were not members of a any ‘calpulli’ (clan) and so worked the land as share-croppers.

Tezca

4th Mar 2018

Somehow I bet that some still managed to get drugs illegally then just like there’s illegal drugs now lol.
This is all very interesting/helpful information.

Aztec/Mexica commoner alongside noble