For the purpose of legislation the Babylonian community was divided into three main classes or grades of society, which corresponded to well-defined strata in the social system. The highest or upper class embraced all the officers or ministers attached to the court, the higher officials and servants of the state, and the owners of considerable landed property. But wealth or position did not constitute the sole qualification distinguishing the members of the upper class from that immediately below them. In fact, while the majority of its members enjoyed these advantages, it was possible for a man to forfeit them through his own fault or misfortune and yet to retain his social standing and privileges. It would seem therefore that the distinction was based on a racial qualification, and that the upper class, or nobles, as we may perhaps term them,[4] were men of the predominant, race, sprung from the West-Semitic or Amorite stock which had given Babylon its first independent dynasty. In course of time its racial purity would tend to become diluted by intermarriage with the older inhabitants, especially where these had thrown in their lot with the invaders and had espoused their cause. It is even possible that some of the latter had from the first obtained recognition in its ranks in return for military or political service. But, speaking broadly, we may regard the highest class in the social order as representing a racial aristocracy that had imposed itself. The second class in the population comprised the great body of free men who did not come within the ranks of the nobles; in fact, they formed a middle class between the aristocracy and the slaves. They bore a title which in itself implied a state of inferiority,[5] and though they were not necessarily poor and could possess slaves and property, they did not share the privileges of the upper class. It is probable that they represented the subject race, derived in part from the old Sumerian element in the population, in part from the Semitic strain which had long been settled in Northern Babylonia and by intercourse and intermarriage had lost much of its racial purity and independence. The difference, which divided and marked off from one another these two great classes of free men in the population, is well illustrated by the scale of payments as compensation for injury which they were obliged to make or were entitled to receive. Thus if a noble should be guilty of stealing an ox, or other animal, or a boat, which was private or temple property, he had to pay thirty times its value as compensation; whereas, if the thief were a member of the middle class the penalty was reduced to ten times the price, and, should he have no property with which to pay, he was put to death. The penalty for man-slaughter was also less if the assailant was a man of the middle class; he could obtain a divorce more cheaply, and he paid his doctor or surgeon a smaller fee for a successful operation.