Manumission of slaves was a common practice among ancient societies, but the Roman tradition of creating legal citizens of their liberated slaves was in striking contrast to the manumission customs employed by their near neighbors in the Greek East. In a letter written in the late third century B.C., Philip V of Macedonia expressed admiration for this atypical incorporation of outsiders into the city-state: "the Romans, who receiving into their citizen-body even their slaves when they free them, giving them even a share in the offices, have by such means not only strengthened their country but also sent out colonies almost to seventy places."1 Emancipation was not only the end of captivity for the Roman slave, it was also the culmination of a process of social integration, a process whereby the slave who had already been partially incorporated into Roman society through the social institutions of household, family, and patron-client friendships became politically assimilated into the Roman state. Most slave-holding societies in both ancient and modern times have used some form of manumission as a means of including outsiders or outcasts into their communities to at least a limited degree, but the Roman practice of attaching full-citizen status to formal liberation was truly historically unique.2Unfortunately, the Romans never explicitly divulged how they came to employ this form of emancipation. The ancient literary evidence addressing slavery in general is predominantly anecdotal,3 while technical rather than philosophical legal texts comprise much of the extant source material explicitly concerned with Roman manumission, so that historical analysis of this practice has typically focused on its juridical and political significance. This study will endeavor to elucidate the Romans' motivations for their particular form of slave emancipation by examining it not as a political institution of incorporation, but rather as a societal custom of inclusion. Such an approach does not deny that Roman manumission had a civic importance; but it does suggest that the impetus for this unusual form of liberation can be found in a broad cultural explanation rather than in a narrowly legal one. This essay analyzes manumission as a customary practice during the Republic by looking at the various methods by which the slave gained his freedom, the cultural foundations of Roman manumission legislation, and the specific social context in which the process was most likely to occur utilizing the concepts of gift exchange and the "rite of passage" to help clarify the Romans' motivations behind this traditional practice. What is most striking about manumission during the Republican period is the lack of either a standard mode of manumission or a body of law regulating the myriad forms that developed, especially when one considers the apparent frequency with which the Romans liberated their slaves.4 In other words, it appears that the Republican legislation governing manumissions was, like much of early classical Roman law, an attempt to codify already existing social practices. Thus a historical analysis of the cultural significance of Republican manumission seems not only appropriate, but necessary.
Investigating the various modes of Roman manumission and the laws pertaining to them will test the thesis that the process of slave emancipation during the Republic was driven more by social custom than by law. The sources for this practice are primarily legal and predominantly Imperial. After the creation of the XII Tables (367 B.C.) and prior to the comprehensive codification efforts under the Emperor Justinian (A.D. 529 and 533), Roman law was loosely promulgated in jurists' handbooks for law students and in the Praetor's edict. The edict is not a collection of legislative acts but statements of procedures to be followed in the administration of the law. It was issued from 367 B.C. to about A.D. 125 by the annually elected urban praetor who could add his rulings to it during his term of office. The collective rulings which were restated at the beginning of each term were known as the edictum tralaticium (the traditional edict). In the early-third century A.D. the jurist Ulpian wrote a vast commentary on the Praetor's edict, and much of Justinian's Digest of A.D. 533 relating to manumission practices is a restatement of Ulpian's work.5 Also extant, from the late second century A.D., is the jurist Gaius' introductory legal handbook explaining manumission and the early Imperial legal reforms of it. The sources specifically treating Republican manumission are a smattering of literary and legal references which are highly anecdotal and sometimes quite obviously apocryphal. Thus one must rely on Imperial legal documents to help construct the framework of Roman Republican manumission. Finally, it is worth noting that in the Roman conception of manumission what is not legislated is as significant as what is.
There were three forms of manumission during the Republic which were the only legal or formal modes of the practice mentioned by M. Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) in his work on rhetoric, Topica:
So-and-so is not a free man unless he has been set free by entry in the census roll [censu], or by touching with the rod [vindicta], or by will [testamento]. None of these conditions has been fulfilled, therefore he is not free.6Cicero's definition is confirmed by Gaius.7 Alan Watson believes that all three forms existed at the time of the XII Tables although that document mentions only manumission testamento.8 Yet several literary sources give even earlier dates for the origin of two of these other categories of official manumission. Formal manumission bestowed both freedom and citizenship on the freed slave. But other unsanctioned forms of manumission also existed throughout Rome's history-i.e. the extraordinary, which might give citizenship, and the extralegal, which certainly did not. Only the latter will be discussed at length in this essay, along with the three formal types of slave emancipation.Manumission censu was enrollment of a slave on the census list of Roman citizens with his owner's consent. It may have been the first form of emancipation to grant citizenship along with liberty to the freedman. The evidence for the traditional origin of manumission censu, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (ca. 60/55-after 7 B.C.), reports that Servius Tullius (578-535 B.C.) as king of Rome allowed already freed slaves to be enrolled as citizens when he created the first census.
This king also took no small care to enlarge the body of citizens, hitting upon a method that had been overlooked by all the kings before him. For they, by receiving foreigners and bestowing upon them equal rights of citizenship without rejecting any, whatever their birth or condition, had indeed rendered the city populous; but Tullius permitted even manumitted slaves to enjoy these same rights, unless they chose to return to their own countries. For he ordered these also to report the value of their property at the same time as all the other free men, and he distributed them among the four city tribes, in which the body of freedmen, however numerous, continued to be ranked even to my day; and he permitted them to share in all the privileges which were open to the rest of the plebeians.9Dionysius does not specifically call this enlistment of former slaves as citizens manumission censu.When discussing manumission by census enrollment, most scholars highlighted the importance of the state in transforming simple emancipation into legal citizenship.10 David Daube goes so far as to suggest that "In manumission censu, enrollment, incorporation by the State, came first, and liberty from the master was, in strictness, only a consequence of the act. The master did not give up what had been his: he lost it, as a result of a political act." By contrast, Daube maintains, it was "a method quite unlike what we found in other modes, where the master released his slave and the State merely took cognizance of, or ratified, the release."11 Daube's hypothesis appears contrary to the evidence and is also quite unsatisfactory when one considers the social context into which Roman slaves were manumitted. The impulse for emancipation began with the master who was most often freeing his household slave to become a part of his client network, whereas the Roman polity's impetus for enrolling slaves into the citizen body in large groups usually arose as an emergency measure.12 And indeed this was very much the case with Servius Tullius's enrollment; that is, in his creation of the census he was desirous of enlisting as many citizens as he could get. However, in this instance, what he did was create de jure citizens of ex-slaves who were already behaving as de facto members of the Roman community. Dionysius points out that these were already liberated slaves who preferred to stay in Rome. This quaint traditional tale-which is probably apocryphal but nevertheless contains a kernel of historical truth-is in fact a means of explaining how the state might have come to play a role in the customary practice of manumission. What is interesting about Dionysius's account is that it suggests this policy of incorporation pre-dates the Republic, and it alludes to another traditional mode of inclusion, the Latin right of ius sedi mutandi (the right to change residence and take up citizenship among the Latins towns including Rome), as a direct precursor to it.13
Manumission censu was probably not the usual way of manumitting a slave because one had to wait five years between each computation of the census. Most scholars believe its use was in decline by the late Republica.14 Masters may have been deterred not only because of the infrequency with which it could be employed, but also because it took away their discretionary power to liberate their slaves whenever they wanted. Manumission vindicta, though it did require the presence of a magistrate, was much more readily available on demand. It was a legal fiction which conferred liberty and citizenship on the slave based on the action vindicatio in libertatem (claim for freedom). Before a magistrate with imperium, an adsertor libertatis (advocate of freedom), who was a Roman citizen and might be either the magistrate's lictor or the master's friend, claimed that the slave was actually a free man in the presence of the master, who made no counterclaim to ownership. The magistrate then touched the slave with a rod called a festuca or vindicta, freeing him.15
How the state came to play a role in manumission by the rod is uncertain. Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17) gives an account that puts its origin in 509 B.C. A slave named Vindicius informed the consuls of the young republic of a conspiracy to restore the monarchy. He was rewarded with freedom and citizenship, and since he was in fact the first person freed in this way, this form of emancipation bears his name.16 Again this appears to be an apocryphal tale which attempts to explain the Republic's role in a customary practice, but in this version the impetus for freeing the slave does seem to rest with the polity. Also, Livy's narrative contradicts other sources which emphasize the master's primary role in this form of emancipation. Several ancient writers including Festus Sextus Pompeius (second century A.D.) record an early classical ceremony of manumission in which, rather than keeping silent, it is the master who executes the manumission ritual, performing symbolic actions which signify ownership of the slave, breaking the bond of possession, and liberation. For example:
A slave is said to be manumitted, when his owner holds that slave's head or some other part of his body and says "I want this man to be free" and takes his hand away from him [literally, "lets him go out of his hand"].17Other versions involve the master holding his slave by a limb, slapping him, and turning him away.18 This symbolic gesture by the master was either lost or taken over by the magistrate (that is, by the obviously symbolic touching with the rod) some time before the Republican era.This early customary version of manumission vindicta is more satisfying to the theory of the traditional nature of manumission than Livy's tale, and one could argue it falls much more in line with the elastic character of this form of emancipation depicted by many ancient sources. For example, although the Republican procedure had to involve a magistrate with imperium, it could be performed anywhere, at any time. Gaius reports, "manumissions can even take place when the Praetor or Proconsul is passing by on his way to the baths or theatre."19 W.W. Buckland says that the slave always had to be present at the manumission vindicta ceremony, but that the master could be absent if necessary, according to Diodorus of Sicily (ca. 80-ca. 29 B.C.).20 This, however, is contradicted by a manumission vindicta performed by Cicero himself for one of his own slaves. When his slave Chrysippus ran away from his duties minding Cicero's son, Cicero denied the slave's formal emancipation on two grounds: first, he claimed that no master was present at the manumission vindicta ritual since he acted as magistrate; and second, based upon the example of an action taken by Drusus as Praetor between 120 and 115 B.C., he claimed the manumission was invalid because Chrysippus did not swear an oath to perform operae (work days owed by the freedman to his patron) at the time of his emancipation.21 In this instance, Cicero is taking advantage of ambiguities in the manumission vindicta procedure-whether the master must always be present and whether an oath must be taken to exact revenge on a disreputable servant.
These examples of the malleability of manumission vindicta, and its possible origin as customary ceremony conducted by the slave owner, suggest that its validity as a means of emancipation depended to a large degree on the master's wishes for freeing his bondsman; that is, whether a vow of fides was offered, whether the master need be present, whether a magistrate was available and sufficiently official. This is not to say the state had no say in the process. Certainly the polity's ratification of the manumission was necessary in order to create a legal citizen of the freedman, just as it was for manumission censu. Obviously Drusus found that on at least one occasion the state could not sanction an emancipation without the oath to perform operae. Livy also reports that in 177 B.C. the Senate, fearing that Latins had found a back-door method of obtaining Roman citizenship, passed a temporary senatus consultum requiring masters to take a special oath at all manumission vindicta ceremonies. This oath ensured that they were not simply requesting the procedure in order to change the manumittee's status.22 Essentially, however, it does seem that it was for the individual master to shape the character of manumission vindicta.
Susan Treggiari contends that manumission by the rod was the most prevalent form of slave emancipation precisely because it was controlled by the master-it could be readily dispensed, almost at will, maintaining the patron's continued economic and social governance over his freedman. Most other scholars, however, suggest that manumission testamento was the most common form of manu-mission.23 Reasons given for its proposed popularity are that it cost the owner nothing and it brought him prestige when at his funeral freed slaves wearing pilei (freedman's caps) followed his bier, demonstrating his magnanimity. It was the form of manumission in which the master was decisively most predominant for two reasons: he could attach a prescribed condition to emancipation; and the state played no part in this method of creating new citizens, unless a challenge to the will arose.24
Only with manumission testamento could the master impose a formal condition for the slave to fulfill before he was eligible for liberty and citizenship.25 The condition might be a money payment to the master's heir, a stipulated number of years of service for the heir, or for a female slave, the production of a number of slave children. Under such a conditional arrangement, the slave legally became a statuliber-technically still a slave, he could be treated by the heir just like property, including being sold. However, if he was sold, the XII Tables provided that he must be emancipated upon fulfillment of the original provision for the new owner.26 If the heir deliberately tried to keep the condition from being accomplished, the statuliber automatically became free. The slave then received the funds to discharge the stipulation of the will from his peculium, the money a master paid to his slaves for their work. The peculium technically was the master's property of which the slave had the use for himself. It was sometimes used by the slave to buy his freedom outright prior to his master's death.27 The master thus retrieved years of wages and still benefited from years of service. He might make a gift of the peculium to his new freedman on emancipation, or could will the slave his peculium with or without freeing him.28
This power of the master to require the fulfillment of a condition for manumission by will was accompanied by the Republican state's lack of authority to impose any substantive criteria on these emancipations. Watson rightly points out that the validity of manumission was not affected by the unworthiness of the slave. While the Roman ideal of slave emancipation was the granting of freedom to the deserving servant, or servus fidelis, Dionysius of Halicarnassus bitterly complained that Roman masters of his day were not living up to the scrupulous standards of their ancestors:
Most of them were given their freedom as a reward for good conduct, and this was the best way of becoming independent of your owner. A small number bought their freedom with money they had earned by working dutifully and honestly. But this is not the situation today: things are in a state of such confusion and the fine traditions of the Roman State are ignored and disgraced to such an extent, that people now buy their freedom (and immediately become Romans) with money which they have acquired through brigandage and robbery and prostitution and similar disreputable activities. Slaves who have advised and supported their owners in poisonings and murders and crimes against the gods or the community receive their freedom from them as a reward; and others, so that they can draw the monthly dole of corn provided by the State or any other grant for poor citizens which leading politicians may be handing out, and then bring it to the persons who have given them their freedom; and others again as a result of their owners' frivolity or silly desire for popularity. I personally know people who conceded freedom to all their slaves after their own deaths so that as corpses they would be acclaimed good men, and so that there would be lots of people wearing the felt liberty-caps on their heads to follow their biers in the funeral procession; and according to what was said by those who knew, some of those in the processions were criminals who had just been freed from prison and had done things worthy of ten thousand deaths. But most people are horrified when they consider these almost indelible blots on the city's reputation; and they criticize this custom, since a powerful city which claims to dominate the entire world ought not to make such persons citizens. There are many other traditions which one could condemn because they were instituted by the ancients but are totally perverted by men today.29"O tempora! O mores!" indeed. This passage is worth quoting at length not only because it illustrates the point that masters exercised great discretionary power over the various forms of Republican manu-mission, but also because it was written on the eve of a significant change in that very aspect of Roman manumission. The fledgling Imperial state was shortly to take a much more active role in discouraging indiscriminate emancipations and in imposing a more stringent official requirement for which ex-slaves could become Roman citizens.It can be conjectured that those manumissions conducted inter vivos (between living persons) were more likely to conform to the ideal of Roman slave emancipation than those conferred by will because the living patron had a vested interest in retaining his former slaves' loyalty. To the forms of manumission inter vivos already discussed must be added a category of liberation which was technically illegal but socially legitimate, that is, informal manumission.30 A master could free his slave simply by stating that his bondsman was free. For example, in the comedy of errors Menaechmi, by Plautus (ca. 250-184 B.C.), the servant Messenio is informally freed twice-once by the identical twin of his master and later by the master himself-with the words "liber esto" ("be free").31 More properly, however, the slave was informally freed per epistulam (by letter) or convivially inter amicos (among friends). Both forms left some record of emancipation, a written document or eyewitnesses. The latter form invoked the traditional custom of the voluntary use of a consilium by a paterfamilias to make a decision that affected the entire domus.32 Informal manumission did not confer citizenship, both the slave and his peculium officially remained the property of his master, and his status was not inheritable by his progeny. However, his quasi-free status was not revocable by his master or his master's heirs. During the Republican period the Praetor's edict guaranteed his freedom along with his patron's right to his property.33 Buckland, without citing any evidence, conjectures that the Praetor's protection would have applied only if the slave was thought worthy of de facto liberty. Thus the polity apparently recognized an illegal form of manumission, but may have also retained the discretionary power to ignore it if it so chose.
The motivations for informal manumission are hazy, especially since official manumission was relatively easily obtained and apparently primarily controlled by masters. Treggiari sees informal manumission as a temporary state which was only occasionally used during the Republica. That is, it may have been a preliminary stage in the manumission process, perhaps used in cases of emergency, or by poorer masters who could no longer financially support their slaves. She even suggests that Cicero's most famous slave, M. Tullius Tiro, may have been informally manumitted while desperately ill, and later officially emancipated when he recovered his health. Buckland believes the main purpose of informally freeing slaves was to release the slave not from his master, but from working for his mas-ter-perhaps in order to be employed outside the master's household. Watson notes that since Cicero claimed Chrysippus's manumission vindicta was defective, it automatically became an irrevocable informal manumission. Since disgruntled patrons could not re-enslave disloyal servants until the Imperial period, this may have been a case in which the master could regain his right to his slave's property as a means of punishing him. Thus, informal manumission might have been a punishment for the slave for not living up to the ideal of the faithful servant.34
The Republican sources which most often mention this category of manumission, Roman comedies, may hold a clue to incentives for its use. In the works of Plautus, it is the stock character of the servus callidus (sly servant, or trickster), and not the servus fidelis, who is often seen receiving his freedom from his befuddled master. His informal manumission is often conducted casually, almost cavalierly, with a simple liber esto.35 But strikingly, he is freed for the exact same reasons real Roman slaves were freed-services rendered to his patron. And Treggiari points out that these artful dodgers of the Roman theater also bought their freedom as often as they were given it by grateful masters.36
It seems logical to infer that Roman Republican masters availed themselves of informal manumission simply because it was a more convenient way to free slaves inter vivos than formal methods requiring a magistrate with imperium. Treggiari's suggestion that this was a temporary or emergency measure is persuasive, although certainly some masters intended it to be more permanent, seeing it as a means of maintaining their economic control over their slaves while perhaps holding out the hope of eventual formal manumission. Even though the state could not control this unofficial form of freedom, the Praetor's edict was obviously aimed at keeping masters honest by protecting slaves' quasi-liberty. Informal emancipation helps to validate our hypothesis that Republican manumission was a customary practice. The master was totally in control of this mode of social integration in which neither citizen-ship nor unabridged liberty was given outright, but was rather held in abeyance.
One extraordinary form of manumission available during the Republican period must be discussed not because it was regularly used, but because by its use the practitioner effectively circumvented Roman emancipation laws while upholding Roman manumission traditions. This was adoption by the master of the slave as his child or the giving in adoption of his slave to another.37 Research shows that this rarely employed practice existed in Republican times,38 and Justinian's Institutes dates it to the time of Cato, but it does not appear to have survived into the Imperial period.39 According to utilized sources, the act of adoption automatically manumitted the slave, and extraordinarily, he became a citizen, but never became a freedman; that is, adoption conferred freeborn or ingenuus status. This method of emancipating a slave was obviously exceptional and was not primarily meant to skirt the law. Rather it was an avenue by which the master could not only include a very special slave in his household, his clientele and his community, but also in his people. In other words, adoption was the master's choice to award his slave not just Roman civitas, but Roman genius. While this obviously represents an extreme form of manumission, at its core it is quite similar to the more regular emancipation methods previously discussed: it was at once a method of cultural inclusion and a privately initiated act that had public consequences.
After this lengthy tour of the modes of Republican slave liberation, which has demonstrated how grounded in custom this practice was, it will be helpful to explore two aspects of manumission legislation that point out the degree to which the law did not shape this custom during the Republic: first, some significant features of emancipation went largely untouched by Republican law; and, second, a definite legal program for regulating manumission did emerge under the young Empire. The Republican Romans did not have a body of law that governed manumission, but instead relied on ad hoc measures to deal with particular problems as they arose. Examples of this are described in the clause of the XII Tables that guaranteed the statuliber's right to liberty if he complied with the conditions imposed by his deceased master, and in the temporary senatus consultum of 177 B.C. requiring masters to take an oath attesting to the legitimacy of each manumission vindicta they sought.40 The primary means whereby the Republican polity promulgated its manumission "strategy" was the Praetor's edict. However, what becomes evident from scrutiny of the Praetor's edict is its unsystematic quality.
One ruling of the Praetor's edict Gaius dates to the Republican period wherein the Praetor protected the quasi-freedom of the informally liberated slave as well as the master's right to the slave's peculium.41 An edict of Praetor Rutilius Rufus (ca. 118 B.C.) was issued to restrict the attempts by patrons to impose excessive demands for operae.42 And another major ruling of the edict, which cannot be positively dated to the Republic but should be mentioned, was the requirement that in his will a freedman had to leave half of his property to his patron. The patron could only be excluded by the ex-slave's natural children, freed or freeborn.43 These examples illustrate the praetors' approach to monitoring manumission: various piecemeal efforts to codify existing practices in order to arrest abuses that periodically developed. They as often deal with issues of property rights-the primary purview of many legal systems-as they treat social relations between masters and slaves.
In fact, it could be argued that the Roman Republic aspired to avoid regulating manumission as a social practice since it conspicuously failed to comprehensively regulate one of the most important components of the slave-master relationship: obedience and loyalty in the new freedman toward his patron. Only the praetorian ruling on how much of his property the freedman was required to will to his patron could be said to fall within such a regulatory category, and it cannot be definitely dated to the Republic, nor can it be said to encompass all the duties the liberated slave traditionally owed his former master. Some scholars believe that newly freed slaves were compelled to take an oath agreeing to perform operae for their liberators at the time of emancipation.44 However, the case of Chrysippus's defective manumission vindicta illustrates why giving an oath was probably not required or even necessary for liberation.45 Cicero says that he is following the example of an action taken by Drusus as praetor, not-as some scholars have mistakenly concluded-that he is invoking a praetorian edict issued by Drusus.46 That is, he is as an official of the state declaring a specific manumission invalid because an oath should have been given in this particular case, presumably because the slave displayed some unworthy attributes. It is striking that originally Cicero considered Chrysippus's manumission perfectly legitimate despite the fact that no oath had been sworn. It was not until after his freedman had proved disloyal that the oath (as well as the role of the master as magistrate) became an issue. If the oath could have originally been forgone by Cicero acting as both master and magistrate in this ceremony-that is, Marcus Tullius Cicero, the quintessential Roman Republican-then it must not have been an essential element of the Republican manumission ritual. This is not to suggest that the oath was not a standard component in the manumission exchange, but rather that operae and the duty to perform it was enforced not so much by a perfunctory oath as by the commanding weight of tradition, since it was the tangible manifestation of the loyalty owed to the patron for his gift of liberty and citizenship.
By contrast, scholars widely acknowledge that slave-owners could not compel obsequium, the dutifulness which the freedman owed his patron. The word normally denoted political loyalty, and in fact Cicero used obsequium in reference to a freedman only once in his correspondence when his expecta-tions of receiving it from Q. Caecilius Pomponius Atticus's freedman Dionysius went unfulfilled.47 However, obsequium was not enforced by law, according to Treggiari, but by the traditional concept of fides. She suggests that a balance was struck between the Republican state's ad hoc attempts to monitor obligations between the patron and his freedman and the commanding role played by tradition in guiding these customary relations. And she contends that while the agreement to perform operae was explicitly made when a mandatory oath was given at manumission, the agreement to give obsequium was an implicit bargain made between master and slave. Alternatively, it seems feasible that both operae and obsequium were obligations the master was able to extract customarily without recourse to any device, such as a legally necessitated oath.48
The comparative weakness of Republican manumission legislation is made abundantly clear when one looks at the concerted effort of the early Imperial state to control slave emancipation.49 Although the lex Fufia Caninia (2 B.C.), the lex Aelia Sentia (A.D. 4) and the lex Junia (n.d.) were not created at a single blow, but over approximately the first fifty years of Imperial rule, they represent a consistent state policy being implemented. The lex Fufia Caninia limited the number of slaves that could be manumitted by will:
G.I.1.43. Those who own more than two and not more than ten slaves are allowed to manumit up to half the number; those who own more than ten and not more than thirty are allowed to manumit up to a third; but those who own more than thirty and not more than a hundred have the right to manumit up to a quarter; and finally, those who own more than a hundred and not more than five hundred are allowed to manumit not more than a fifth; those who own more than five hundred are not given the right to manumit any more-the law forbids anyone to manumit more than a hundred. But if you only own one or two slaves, you are not covered by this law, and there are no restrictions upon your freedom to manumit.Though this law was obviously meant to deter indiscriminate manumissions testamento of the kind decried by Dionysius,50 it is also clear the lex Fufia Caninia was not intended generally to hinder slave emancipation. According to Jane Gardner, the law was instead meant to curb the creation of too many orcini (deadman's freedmen)-i.e., freedmen without strong obligatory ties to family and community. She also believes that ex-slaves who were attached to their patrons or the patron's heirs by commitments of duty helped to reenforce an important social differentiation between themselves and the freeborn. Gardner's analysis suggests that not only did this Imperial legislation address the contemporary problem of haphazard manumissions by will, but also it sought to partly manage the traditional practice of keeping emancipations within the scope of a particular social context by forcing masters who wished to free a larger percentage of their slaves to use inter vivos manumissions which would forge strong social bonds between freedmen and their patrons.51
44. Nor does this law apply to those who free their slaves by some other procedure than by Will. Thus a master manumitting by the rod or by census or informally in the presence of his friends, may set free his whole household, so long as there is no other impediment to giving them their freedom.Much more comprehensive in its endeavor to control manumission practices generally was the lex Aelia Sentia.
G.I.1.17. A slave becomes a Roman citizen if he fulfils the following three conditions. He must be over thirty years of age; his master must own him by Quiritary right; and he must be set free by a just and legitimate manumission, i.e. by the rod or by census or by Will. If any of these conditions is not met, he will become a Latin.52This law also withheld citizenship from "unworthy" slaves no matter how they were manumitted. Instead, those who were put in chains or in prison, had been branded or found guilty of a crime, or were gladiators became freedmen with foreign-subject status and could never become Latins or Roman citizens. They were banned from coming within one hundred miles of Rome and could be reenslaved if they violated this prohibition.54 And the lex Aelia Sentia further provided that anyone whose manu-mission made him a Junian Latin, if he married a Roman citizen, a colonial Latin, or another Junian Latin and they had a child, could qualify the entire family for Roman citizenship at the child's first birthday.55 This law was clearly aimed at preventing frivolous manumissions-of slaves who had not served their owners a sufficient length of time56 or had behaved disreputably, or by masters who had not reached an adequate age of discrimination-and thus was targeted to restrict the master's control over customary practice. Indeed, for the first time ever the state was telling the master whom he could and could not liberate. And this law also sought to legitimate types of manumission that had probably become more commonplace, more customary if you will, as the Republic came to encompass larger and more variegated slave populations-such modes of manumission as informal emancipations and the freeing of kith and kin.
18. That law does not allow slaves below thirty to become Roman citizens on manumission unless they have been freed by the rod after a council [consilium] accepted there was just reason for the manumission.
19. A just reason for manumission exists when, for example, a man manumits in the presence of a council a natural son,53 daughter, brother or sister; or a child he has brought up [alumnus], or his pedagogus [the slave whose job it had been to look after him as a child], or a slave whom he wants to employ as his manager [procurator], or a slave girl whom he intends to marry.
38. The same Lex also prevents an owner under twenty from manumitting, except by the rod and after a council has accepted that there is a just reason.
41. And even if an owner under twenty wants to make his slave a Latin, he still has to prove before a council that there is a just reason, and only afterwards may he manumit the slave informally in the presence of his friends.Finally, the lex Junia, of uncertain date,57 gave all informally or defectively manumitted slaves a distinctive legal status, Junian Latins.58 Coupled with other Imperial laws, such as the lex Aelia Sentia and some marital legislation, this made it possible for these illicitly freed slaves eventually to obtain Roman citizenship.59 Inferring that informal emancipation was a customary stepping stone to formal manumission, the lex Junia would have made this traditional process official; it would have taken it out of the hands of the master and made it the state's province. This slave emancipation law appears as innovative as the lex Aelia Sentia since it also usurped important elements of the master's traditional power, not only by taking away the coercive power he would have held over a partially liberated slave, but also by providing an avenue to full citizenship that bypassed the slave-owner altogether-although the impulse to manumit in this case remained with him. However, also like the lex Aelia Sentia, the lex Junia sought to make what was probably a fairly regular practice by the late Republic less customary and more formal.60
The laws on manumission under the early Empire, along with some provisions of Augustan marriage legislation,61 demonstrate, if not a systematic effort, at least concerted attempts by the state to regu-late a social practice which the Republic had for the most part left to custom. But it is important to note that Imperial emancipation laws reflect long-term conventions as well as contemporary anxieties. Gardner believes that the overall aim of Imperial manumission legislation was to protect the moral character of Roman citizenship.62 It also sought to increase the Roman citizen population, but not at the cost of that moral character. Essentially the Imperial state did not seek to change the nature of manumission as a customary process of integration, but it did strive to oversee and control, though not to expropriate completely, the master's primary role within this traditional practice.
The Roman approach to slavery generally can be characterized as pragmatic rather systematic. The Romans made ad hoc use of the wide variety of slaves available in the Mediterranean basin, educated and unskilled, domestic and professional, men, women and children. They realized that those who became slaves primarily did so through misfortune, but they nevertheless believed enslavement tainted the individual. Republican Rome can be distinguished as a slave-holding society that did not have a slave-holding system, but rather had a slave-holding philosophy wherein those slaves who were deemed deserving of liberation were expected to give continued allegiance to the master in exchange for emancipation and the right to be integrated into the master's community, and whose journey from economic asset to social asset was much like a rite of passage. In examining this unique mentalité of slave-holding it becomes obvious that the purpose of the process of manumission for Romans was not simply to liberate their slaves, but to free them within a particular social context.
Manumission was not available to every Roman slave. Typically, but not absolutely, slaves involved in agricultural production in the rural countryside were denied emancipation because their owners did not see them in the same way they saw urban household servants; that is, they were property first and foremost. Ancient agrarian handbooks often discuss this category of slaves as if they were farm tools.63 And what masters desired from their rural laborers, both freeborn and slave, was long-term stability and hard work rather than intelligence-not unlike their requirements for farm animals.64 Rewards for such slaves were almost entirely limited to the accumulation of pecuniary property, which technically belonged to the master. M. Terentius Varro (116-27 B.C.) encouraged masters to grant the slave-managers of their estates peculia, and even the obdurate M. Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.) permitted his slaves the opportunity to earn money on their own.65 However, no mention is made of these slaves eventually buying their freedom, though at some point they must have been able to do so. The only mention of granting manumissions for these agricultural slaves was of women who had borne their masters at least four slave children-again emphasizing the degree to which these slaves were merely beasts of burden to their owners.66 Some ancient writers specifically advocated decent treatment for agrarian bondsmen,67 but, in general, rural slave workers lacked the kind of personal relationships with their masters that fostered the manumission practices from which their domestic, urban counterparts benefitted.68
It was this personal connection to the master that made possible a cultural scenario that fostered not just social, but political, manumission. The Roman household was an establishment that blended the immediate family of the paterfamilias with slave servants, occasional extended family members, freeborn and freedman clients, and social and professional friends and patrons. Worldly, social, and familial affairs were not differentiated. It was in this atmosphere that a Roman slave could connect with his master and establish a basis for eventual emancipation. As a group the household slaves were known as the familia urbana, and as members of the master's family they stood just outside the core of the conjugal unit-husband, wife, and children. Slaves are referred to in the law as family members who are subject to the patria potestas of the paterfamilias in the same way that sons were.69 The former slave and creator of mimes Publilius Syrus (mid-first century B.C.) wrote, "A good freedman is a son notwithstanding nature."70 Pliny the Younger (A.D. 61/62-ca. 114) held that for the slave, the household was not just his community, it was also his nation.71
The primary purpose of slave-holding at Rome was to create a work force for the city-state of both domestic and professional servants. Cicero's attitude that the only proper occupation for a freeborn Roman was agriculture, and that all other types of labor were menial and the task of inferiors, was ubiquitous.72 This left a great many trades open to slaves, freedmen, and foreigners. The range of jobs open to women slaves and freedwomen was extremely limited: documentation describes women being employed as prostitutes, but to what extent they may have played a part in such large scale trades as pottery-making is unknown; within the domus they were primarily domestics and nurses. The nurse was a central part of many Roman households and she might be a poor freeborn Roman as well as a slave or freedwoman. Keith Bradley states that her importance extended well beyond the child's infancy, and she might even be the primary caretaker of a daughter until the girl left home to marry sometime in her mid-teens. In Livy's tale of Verginia, Bradley points out, it is her nurse accompanying her to school who is the first to cry out for help against the rapacious Appius Claudius who is trying to claim the girl as his slave, and her nurse who can attest to her true paternity.73 According to Publilius Syrus, "The grief of a nurse comes next to that of a mother."74 Many inscriptions on funeral monuments attest to the genuine affection shared by nurses and their nurslings.75
Slave men and freedmen too might be engaged as child-minders, mostly as teachers, or as specialized domestic servants, such as cooks. One of Chryssipus's tasks was to look after Cicero's son while he was away from home.76 But more regularly, male slaves and freedmen made up much of the city of Rome's work force, supplying it with day-laborers, artisans, shopkeepers, doctors, teachers, and architects. To be sure, free foreigners and Romans were a part of this working class as well-Cicero's vulgar mechan-ics-but unless they were very poor they tended to own the businesses in which slaves worked or they occupied the senior managerial positions. Slaves were purchased to help the working-class Roman householder in his profession, and if they proved diligent and conscientious they might be freed to become the master's overseers or clients who could use their skills to start their own shops. Treggiari found that in the making of Arrentine pottery the managers were freedmen who had risen over the predominantly slave labor force alongside of which they had once worked.77 One of the most important jobs of slaves and freedmen in relation to the upper-class Roman domus was the professional clerk. Slaves and freedmen were the white-collar office workers of Roman antiquity, and in fact, M. Linicius Crassus and Atticus employed teachers to educate slaves for such positions.78 Treggiari has helpfully compiled in an appendix all references to slaves and freedmen made by Cicero which reveals that almost all of those whom the master took note of in his correspondence were readers, clerks, accountants, letter-carriers, secretaries, and literary assistants.79 These more educated, clerical slaves obviously stood a better chance of developing a rapport with their elite masters, and thus of obtaining manumission from them.
There were a variety of motivations for manumitting slaves.80 Less common reasons were for the master to evade being incriminated by slaves in criminal trials, since slaves could be tortured for information, and to avoid property confiscations, since slaves were technically property.81 Treggiari believes that the most prevalent reason for freeing a slave was economic, "to free the master from economic burdens while giving him the right or option to exploit his new freedman often to more advantage than before."82 Manumission also swelled the train of the master's clients, recognized slaves of extraordinary individual merit, and boosted the morale of those still in bondage who might aspire to liberty. Yet the unique form of Roman manumission which gave citizenship with freedom was also given for less pragmatic reasons, especially to slaves who were very much a part of the Roman family. Sincere affection was regularly a motive to manumit slaves who were friends and possibly even relatives. Treggiari found two Republican funerary inscriptions of freedwomen which tell of emancipa-tions that occurred for the express purpose of marriage to a patron and a patron's son.83 The genuine feeling Cicero and his family had for his slave Tiro is well-known. Q. Tullius Cicero summed up the entire family's elation at this manumission when he wrote to his brother:
In the matter of Tiro, my dear Marcus, as surely as I hope to see you, and my son Cicero, and my darling Tullia, and your son, you have done what gave me extreme pleasure, when you preferred that he whose position was so unworthy of him should be our friend rather than a slave. Believe me, when I had perused your letter, and his, I jumped for joy, and I not only thank, but I congratulate you too.84Pliny also expressed this warm regard for his slaves when they were ill and felt consoled that at least he could easily manumit them so that they might die as free men.85As discussed throughout this essay, the most ideologically important reason for freeing a slave was the acknowledgment that he had served well and faithfully. When Cicero considered freeing his slaves to avoid their being confiscated with his other property, he wrote to his wife Terentia telling her to free only those who were deserving.86 And an Imperial inscription shows how a patroness wished to include her servants in her sepulcher, but only those who had shown their loyalty:
But the servus fidelis was not simply an ideal that Roman masters hoped for; he was symbolically what made Roman manumission as a customary practice viable. The master gave the slave libertas and civitas while the slave gave him operae and obsequium in a kind of gift exchange. But what was exchanged had symbolic meaning as well, going beyond what each party actually gave. Comparing diverse forms of slave emancipation, anthropologist Orlando Patterson found a common cultural expression of gift exchange in all types of manumission in which the exchange is a social compact wherein ideological and utilitarian elements are mediated by the ritual process. "Ritual not only mediates between the two other components, but further mediates between the specific interaction and the total system of interactions," so that a demonstration of self-interest on each side is renounced in favor of mutuality, giving the process of manumission a social and moral significance.88To the Spirits of the Dead Longina Procla made this for herself and for her freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants; except for the women who deserted me while I was alive-they are not to have access or entry to this tomb.87
In trying to clarify the Romans' odd form of manumission for his fellow Greeks, Dionysius beautifully captured this idea of the gift exchange. Once again it is worth quoting him at length:
[Servius Tullius] called it great folly on their part if, after they had granted liberty to such of their slaves as deserved it, [the Romans] envied them the rights of citizens; and he advised them, if they thought them bad men, not to make them free, and if good men, not to ignore them because they were foreigners. He declared that they were doing an absurd and stupid thing, if, while permitting all strangers to share the rights of citizenship without distinguishing their condition or inquiring closely whether any of them had been manumitted or not, they regarded such as had been slaves among themselves as unworthy of this favour. And he said that, though they thought themselves wiser than other people, they did not even see what lay at their very feet and was to be observed every day and what was clear to the most ordinary men, namely, that not only the masters would take great care not to manumit any of their slaves rashly, for fear of granting the greatest of human blessings indiscriminately, but the slaves would be more zealous to serve their masters faithfully when they knew that if they were thought worthy of liberty they should presently become citizens of a great and flourishing state and receive both these blessings from their masters. He concluded by speaking of the advantage that would result from this policy, reminding those who understood such matters, and informing the ignorant, that to a state which aimed at supremacy and thought itself worthy of great things nothing was so essential as a large population, in order that it might be equal to carrying on all its wars with its own armed forces and might not exhaust itself as well as its wealth in hiring mercenary troops; and for this reason, he said, the former kings had granted citizenship to all foreigners. But if they enacted this law also, great numbers of youths would be reared from those who were manumitted and the state would never lack for armed forces of its own, but would always have sufficient troops, even if it should be forced to make war against all the world. And besides this advantage to the public, the richest men would privately receive many benefits if they permitted the freedmen to share in the government, since in the assemblies and in the voting and in their other acts as citizens they would receive their reward in the very situations in which they most needed it, and furthermore would be leaving the children of these freedmen as so many clients to their posterity.89This speech put into the mouth of a sixth-century B.C. statesman perfectly expresses, not what was tangibly at risk in withholding citizenship from Roman freedmen, but rather what was culturally at stake. By refusing to give freed slaves a full share in society, the Romans would be turning away not only future soldiers and clients, but also deserving servants who would have the passion of the converted in upholding the Roman way of life.90Roman Republican manumission as a cultural expression conforms to another anthropological interpretation; that is, manumission as a kind of rite of passage. Victor Turner explains that the rite of passage is a ritual of status elevation which usually marks a life crisis or moment of transition, such as birth, puberty, marriage, or death. The ritual itself is marked by three distinct phases: separation, margin, and reaggregation, or preliminal, liminal, and postliminal. Turner observes, "If liminality is regarded as a time and place of withdrawal from the normal modes of social action, it can be seen as potentially a period of scrutinization of the central values and axioms of the culture in which it occurs."91 Roman manumission was certainly an elevation of status and a moment of transition for the liberated slave. And in several of its forms can be found the distinct phases of the ritual. For example, in the probable early form of manumission vindicta, the master's gestures symbolized possession, breaking that tie, and freedom-or separation, margin and reaggregation. In the dead master's funeral procession, the slaves who wore pilei while following the bier were in a liminal state, no longer slaves, not fully freedman, much like a bride on her wedding day is neither virgin nor matron. The pileus, which was the only form of dress that ever distinguished Roman Republican slaves and freedmen from the freeborn,92 notably was also worn by slaves during the Saturnalia, a festival of status reversal during which the slave and master exchanged places-another liminal ritual wherein normal modes of social action no longer applied and the cultural categories of master and slave underwent societal scrutiny. The statuliber and the informally emancipated slave were also in a kind of liminal state in which their behavior was under inspection, having to meet the requirements of the dutiful servant for them to pass on to full integration.
It is also possible to argue that the freedman's position in Roman society generally partook of a kind of liminality. That is, although ex-slaves were given liberty and citizenship, they were also subject to restrictions by custom and law that ordinary freeborn Romans were not. These limitations were a way for Roman society to keep an eye on the emancipated foreigners in their midst. In the area of legal restrictions specific to freedmen alone, which limited their freedoms despite their full Roman citizenship status, unfortunately it cannot be discerned which regulations were enacted expressly during the Republic, since the main sources for these limitations on ex-slaves are Justinian's codifications of law.93 Yet, whether enforced by law or by custom, it is recognized, for instance, that freedmen were not allowed to bring lawsuits against their patrons, and that they were supposed to financially support former masters in times of need.94 Gaius documents that the Praetor's edict required freedmen to will half of their property to their patrons.95 And from Livy one can discern the legal restrictions on a Republican freedwoman by his example of one who had them specially lifted. For her exceptional service to the state, Hispala Faecenia was allowed to alienate property herself, marry outside her dead patron's family, choose her own new guardian, and most socially significant, marry a freeborn Roman without tarnishing him by her former status and occupation of slave prostitute.96 Treggiari shows that while freedmen were allowed to vote just like other Roman citizens, they were almost always confined to the urban tribes and they were not eligible for equestrian rank no matter how wealthy they might be. This effectively, though not explicitly, prevented them from holding political office. Augustus would later expressly prohibit freedmen from office-holding with his lex Malacitana.97 Evidence also reveals that freedmen were often herded into the non-agricultural professions, so that in order to become truly Roman, they, as well as freeborn Roman workers, would have had to divest themselves of their commercial enterprises to legitimate their wealth.
Alan Watson suggests, "there was at least a strong suspicion that slavery was detrimental to the slave's character, that freedmen as a group-particularly those freed, perhaps rather indiscriminate-ly, by testament-were rather untrustworthy, but that the taint was not passed on to the children born in freedom to ex-slaves."98 Having children, especially having them after being liberated, might indeed have represented a final reaggregation for manumitted slaves. While it would not have raised their own status, it did elevate their families' status to that of full freeborn Roman citizens. For example, freeborn and freed children were the only kin that could exclude the patron completely from inheriting from his freedman during the Republica.99 Freedmen's sons were not only eligible for equestrian status, they could also hold elected office. During the Imperial period, some restrictions were lifted by legislation aimed at increasing the Roman population. Giving them greater control over alienating property and choosing a patron, for example, encouraged freedmen and freedwomen to have several children.100 Documentation also affirms how informally manumitted slaves were not only given Latin status, but also released from that somewhat marginalized status by having a single citizen child.101102
Whether as an extended or a simple rite of passage, the slave's journey from bondage to liberty was a process of social integration in Republican Rome in which, atypically, political assimilation was offered in exchange for cultural compliance and conformity. The customary practice of manumission which was the culmination of this process had to take place within the domus not only because it was the focus of Roman social life, but also because it was the center of Roman culture, the core of all Roman institutions. Within such a social context, it was possible to tutor the slave in obedience to the master and respect for the community and, most importantly, in cultural adaption. For some of those slaves who were given the opportunity to adopt and adapt, such as Tiro, this method of integration ending in social and political emancipation was enormously successful. But this was not the case for every slave that the Roman master liberated, as the story of Chrysippus clearly shows. The cultural significance of Roman Republican manumission was that, as a practice and an ideology, it was largely successful because it was based on mos maiorum first and only secondarily on ius.
* * * * * This essay began with the explicit contention that the ancient Roman practice of slave emancipation was the culmination of a process of social integration. This assertion is controversial among social scientists studying comparative systems of slavery. Anthropologist Patterson characterizes the total ordeal of slavery from enslavement through manumission as just such a process, that is, as a single, elongated right of passage wherein the slave experiences enslavement as separation from his original community, slavery as a liminal state of social death, and emancipation as rebirth within the master's society.103104
My only difference with those who accept the "slavery-to-kinship continuum" as an adequate representation of the slave's position in society is that it obscures, rather than clarifies, the relationship between slavery and kinship. A slave stops being a slave, I would argue, precisely at the moment when he or she begins to play a role in the dominant kinship system. The continuum model assumes that all, or at least most, slaves will eventually emerge at the other end-as recognized kin.105And finally, in contrast to the process analysis which emphasizes social relations within a system of slavery, Watson argues that the property aspect and coercive dimension of slave-holding are more primary to an examination of slavery as an institution than is social interaction.106Historians are just beginning to enter this debate. Wiedemann has found the dichotomy between open and closed systems of slavery helpful in contrasting Roman and Greek slave-holding systems, and in posing the question "To what extent ought we therefore to succumb to the temptation to see slavery at Rome-in contrast to the Greek world-in terms of the ideal type of a 'process of integration'?"107 While Wiedemann's conclusion is quite sound-that Roman masters believed in an ideal of manumitting and incorporating faithful servants into their community, but often simply based their emancipation decisions on practical self-interests108 -the dichotomy between open and closed slavery systems is misleading because Republican Romans did not have a unified slave-holding system. As previously established, for some Roman slaves, particularly those engaged in agricultural labors, the proprietary relationship between master and slave was indeed paramount. But for other servants who had close, personal connections to their owners, such as women domestics who later became their patrons' legal wives or male professionals who shared interests and associations with their masters, cultural integration was almost a given. And to suggest that Roman slavery partook of both closed and open modes of slave-holding merely obfuscates the point that Republican Romans lacked a systematic approach to slavery. One has only to compare the writings of Cato the Elder on slaves to those of Cicero to realize this point. Further, any analysis which tries to utilize the open and closed modes of slavery as outlined by Watson to explain Roman slavery is stymied by our lack of precise knowledge about land availability in ancient Italy.
Rather than a slave-holding system, the Republican Romans had a slave-holding philosophy which was based, as Wiedemann suggested, on social and economic pragmatism as well as on an ideology of incorporation for those slaves who exhibited fides for the Roman way of life-or as Treggiari puts it, those who had become thoroughly adapted to a Hellenized cultural milieu.109 Patterson's process analysis is incomplete for Roman slavery because he sees only a single pattern of slave-holding for all of ancient Roman history. And Watson's dual models are likewise deficient because he depicts systems of slavery as politico-economic institutions. This essay has instead chosen to view slavery during the Roman Republic as part of that community's socio-economic patterns of cultural inclusion. Within these traditional, unsystematic patterns, manumission was clearly part of a process of social integration, which was occasionally defined and bolstered by law, thereby giving it a political along with a cultural significance. This makes sense when one realizes that the political and the social were inextricably intermingled in the Roman mind. The Romans, in fact, appear to have had a penchant for cultural inclusion of outsiders: in their early exchanges of citizens with other Latin towns; in the varying degrees of political incorporation they distributed to their colonies, allies, and even neighbor-ing states; and in the eventual investiture of all the inhabitants of Italy with Roman citizenship. Thus the Romans' practice of making automatic citizens of their emancipated slaves may appear unique in comparison to most slave-holding societies, but it was perfectly in step with the Roman way of doing things. Unfortunately, the evocative question of why the Romans possessed this cultural inclination for inclusion, especially in contrast to the xenophobic tendencies of the Greeks, remains a historical query that eludes even a broad cultural explanation of Republican manumission practices.
Endnotes
1 IG 9. 2. 577. The letter was written in 214 or 215, and Philip, according to Stanley Burstein, exaggerates the political benefits given Roman freedmen (they could not hold offices, though their sons could) and the number of Roman colonies; Burstein, ed., The Hellenistic Age from the battle of Ipsos to the death of Kleopatra VII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 87-88. Return to essay2 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 235-36, 243, 250-61. Return to essay
3 M.I. Finley states, "The only surviving ancient attempt at an analysis of slavery is in the first book of Aristotle's Politics." In Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (New York: Viking Press, 1980), 117. Return to essay
4 For the frequency of Roman manumission see: Susan Treggiari, Roman Freedman during the Late Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 31-36; Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves: Sociological Studies in Roman History 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), Chapter 2, especially 115-32; Patterson, Social Death, Chapter 10; Thomas Wiedemann, "The Regularity of Manumission," Classical Quarterly, 79 (1985): 162-75. Freedmen made up a substantive portion of the city's workers, especially artisans, shopkeepers, and professionals, such as architects, doctors, and teachers. However, it is not known for certain what percentage of Republican Rome's slave population was employed in urban settings. Slaves occupied in agricultural labors in the countryside were much less likely to be emancipated. Return to essay
5 Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold, eds. Roman Civilization: Selected Readings. Vol. 1, The Republic and the Augustan Age. 3rd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 38-39. Return to essay
6 Top. 2. 10. Return to essay
7 Gaius, Institutes, 1. 17. (Hereafter G.I.) Return to essay
8 Alan Watson, The Law of Persons in the Later Roman Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 183; Watson, Roman Slave Law (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1987), 24. Return to essay
9 Ant. Rom. 4. 22. Return to essay
10 W.W. Buckland, The Roman Law of Slavery: The Conditions of the Slave in Private Law from Augustus to Justinian. Rev. ed. (New York: AMS Press, 1969), 439; Watson, Slave Law, 24; Treggiari, 25; David Daube, "Two Early Patterns of Manumission," Journal of Roman Studies 36 (1946): 60-63. Return to essay
11 Daube, 63, 60. Return to essay
12 See for example: Livy 22. 57. 11; Val. Max. 7. 6. 1; App. B Civ. 1. 6, 11-12. Return to essay
13 It must be acknowledged that Dionysius attributes many of Rome's traditional practices to Servius Tullius. This does not, however, adversely affect the hypothesis that the Roman methods of manumission were traditional practices which later became legally ratified by the state. Return to essay
14 Alan Watson dates the demise of the census, and thus of manumission censu, to 166 B.C. (Slave Law, 24). Treggiari notes that this type of emancipation was alive and well according to Livy in 177 B.C., but that the census itself was in decline after Sulla's reign (Livy 41. 9; Treggiari, 27). But Jane Gardner and Thomas Wiedemann assert that the census continued into at least the first century A.D.; Gardner and Wiedemann, eds. The Roman Household: A Sourcebook (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 145. Return to essay
15 Summarized from: Buckland, 441-42, 451; Watson, Slave Law, 24-25; Watson, Law of Persons, 193; Treggiari, 23; Gardner and Wiedemann, 145. Republican sources which mention manumission vindicta specifically include: Cic. Top. 2. 10; ibid., ad Att. 7. 2; Plaut. Mil. Glor. 961. Return to essay
16 2. 3-6. Return to essay
17 Paulus, apud Festus p. 159. Translation from Gardner and Wiedemann, 50. Return to essay
18 Buckland, 451-52. Buckland mentions Festus, without giving a specific reference, and cites the very late Isidore, bishop of Seville, (A.D. 600-636) 9. 48 as his primary sources for this practice. Unfortunately, he only alludes to other relevant ancient sources which are discussed in other unavailable secondary works, but he does not cite them because they are not juristic texts. Other modern scholars accept the practice as a plausible early version of manumission vindicta, but cite no ancient sources for this conclusion. See Watson, Law of Persons, 193; Treggiari, 24. Return to essay
19 G.I. 1. 20. Also see: Pliny Ep. 7. 16; Justinian, Digest, 40. 2. 7-8. (Hereafter J.D.) Return to essay
20 Buckland, 442; Diod. Sic. 36. 4. 8. Return to essay
21 ad Att. 7. 2. I have followed Treggiari's reading of this episode, i.e., that Cicero was claiming two reasons for revoking Chrysippus's manumission. Watson holds that Cicero was only denying the manumission on the grounds that he could not formally represent both the master and the magistrate in the ceremony. Also, when Cicero writes that he "denies" he freed his recalcitrant slave, I believe that it is formal manumission only that he is denying (Treggiari, 257-58; Watson, Law of Persons, 191-92, 197-98). Return to essay
22 41. 9. Return to essay
23 Treggiari, 31; Buckland, 442, 460; Watson, Law of Persons, 194; Gardner and Wiedemann, 147.Return to essay
24 Treggiari does not discount the popularity of manumission testamento, but regards manumission vindicta as more common in the late Republic because the corn dole encouraged inter vivos manumissions (i.e., those between living persons) by poorer masters whose freedmen could be fed at public expense (27-28). Return to essay
25 Our main legal sources for manumission testamento are, unfortunately, very early and very late, i.e., the XII Tables and J.D. 40. 7. Return to essay
26 XII Tab. 6. This is in fact the only mention the XII Tables makes about any form of manumission. Return to essay
27 This transaction was frequently mentioned in the Roman comedies of Plautus. See for example: Aul. 310; Capt. 120; Rud. 927; Trim. 563. Return to essay
28 See J.D. 40. 1. 5 on the right of the slave to complain if the master refused to manumit him after being paid an agreed sum. Also see Tacitus Ann. 14. 42-45 for a possible example of this. Buckland says that slaves manumitted by the rod or informally took their peculium with them unless it was expressly reserved by the master (189). Return to essay
29 Ant. Rom. 4. 24. Translation from Thomas Wiedemann, ed. Greek and Roman Slavery (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1981), 71. Return to essay
30 Summarized from: G.I. 1. 44; Buckland, 444-45; Watson, Slave Law, 30-31. Return to essay
31 Men. 1028, 1147. Return to essay
32 W.K. Lacey, "Patria Potestas," in The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives, ed. Beryl Rawson (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1986), 137-40. Return to essay
33 G.I. 3. 56; Fr. Dos. 4-5, 8. Fragmenta Dositheiana references from: Buckland, 444; Watson, Law of Persons, 197. Return to essay
34 Treggiari, 29-31, 259-63; Buckland, 445; Watson, Law of Persons, 197-98. Return to essay
35 Men. 1020-1035, 1145-1150; Capt. 938-948; Cos. 284-285, 313. By contrast, Watson believes Plautus's work reflects Attic rather than Roman manumission laws, though he does acknowledge that Roman audiences would have identified with such practices (Law of Persons, 198-99). But I question whether the "average" Roman citizen would have known what the Attic law of manumission was. Return to essay
36 Treggiari, 17. For examples of this in Plautus see above, note 27. Return to essay
37 Summarized from: Watson, Law of Persons, 90-98; Watson, Slave Law, 27-28; Buckland, 448. Return to essay
38 Gell. N A 5. 19. 13-14. Return to essay
39 Justinian, Institutes, 1. 11. 12. (Hereafter J.I.) Return to essay
40 XII Tab. 6; Livy 41. 9. See above, 11, 12. Return to essay
41 G.I. 3. 56. See above, 15. Return to essay
42 J.D. 38. 1. 2, 2. 1 (Ulpian). Return to essay
43 G.I. 3. 41. Return to essay
44 Buckland, 442; Watson, Slave Law, 40; Treggiari, 75. By contrast, Jane Gardner does not believe operae was a universal concomitant of manumission; "The Purpose of the Lex Fufia Caninia," Echos du Monde Classique/Classical Views 35 (1991): 27. Return to essay
45 Cic. ad Att. 7. 2. Return to essay
46 This observation is made by Watson (Law of Persons, 191). Return to essay
47 ad Att. 8. 4. 1. This observation is made by Treggiari (73). Return to essay
48 Treggiari, 80-81. Return to essay
49 The source used for this study of Imperial manumission laws is G.I. 1. 8-55. Translation from Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery. Return to essay
50 Ant. Rom. 4. 24. Also see Dio Cass. 55. 3. 7. Return to essay
51 Gardner, 27-29, 37. Return to essay
52 On manumitted slaves being given Latin or Junian Latin rather than Roman status see the discussion of the lex Junia below. Return to essay
53 For a possible example see CIL 1. 1223. Return to essay
54 G.I. 1. 13, 15, 26-27. Return to essay
55 G.I. 1. 29, 32a. Gaius lists a variety of other methods by which Latins could become Roman citizens, but most were probably not part of the lex Aelia Sentia. (See G.I. 1. 28-35.) Return to essay
56 What constituted an average or sufficient length of service by a household slave is uncertain. The point of the law was to guide the inclusion process by trying to limit the number of young, less-well acclimated slaves who were freed. Return to essay
57 While most scholars consider this law, like the lex Fufia Caninia and the lex Aelia Sentia, to be Augustan, Gardner argues for a Tiberian date (Gardner and Wiedemann, 159; Gardner, 31, note 25). An exact date is not critical to this discussion. Instead, concern that it was part of a concerted early Imperial effort to regulate manumission practices, which Gardner in fact asserts was the case, is of more importance (ibid., 23). Return to essay
58 G.I. 1. 22-24. Return to essay
59 P.R.C. Weaver's study of Imperial inscriptions suggests that Junian Latins did not always automatically take advantage of these opportunities to move up to Roman status (Weaver, "Children of Freedmen (and Freedwomen)," in Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome, ed. Beryl Rawson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991): 187-89). Return to essay
60 Treggiari takes an opposing view to that presented here, suggesting that informal manumission was probably not much in use during the Republic, and that the lex Junia actually escalated its practice (30-31). This essay is intent on showing, however, that generally Roman legislation followed customary practice and that this was specifically the case with manumission. Return to essay
61 The lex Julia de martandis ordinibus (18 B.C.) and the lex Papia Poppaea (A.D. 9), which Roman jurists often mistakenly referred to as the lex Julia et Papia, encouraged ex-slaves to procreate by releasing freedwomen who had born at least four children from their patron's guardianship and by excluding patrons from inheriting from wealthy freedmen if they had at least three children (G.I. 1. 194, 3. 42-44). This legislation was obviously concerned with increasing the Roman population as well as with tying freedmen to the Roman community. Return to essay
62 Gardner, 23. Return to essay
63 Cato Rust. 2. 7; Columella Rust. 1. 8. 20, 9. 1-4; Pliny Ep. 3. 19. 3, 7. Return to essay
64 Columella Rust. 1. 7. 3-4, 8. 2-4. Return to essay
65 Varro Rust. 1. 17. 5; Plut. Cat. mai. 21. Return to essay
66 Columella Rust. 1. 8. 19. Return to essay
67 Ibid., 1. 8. 5, 15, 17-19, 12. 3. 7; Varro Rust. 1. 17. 1. Return to essay
68 For example, see Seneca's inability to recognize a childhood playmate among his familia rustica (rural slave household) after many years absence (Ep. 12). Return to essay
69 G.I. 1. 49, 52, 55, 2. 87; J.D. 37. 15, 50. 16. Also see Lacey, 130-33. Return to essay
70 Sententiae, 498. Return to essay
71 Ep. 8. 16. Return to essay
72 Off. 1. 42. Return to essay
73 Livy 3. 44-48; Keith R. Bradley, Discovering the Roman Family: Studies in Roman Social History (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 23-28. Return to essay
74 Sententiae, 659. Return to essay
75 Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery, 124; Bradley, Chapters 2 & 4. Bradley has found that many of the inscriptions show the prevalence of nurses of slave or former slave status. Unfortunately, most inscriptional evidence, such as that cited here, is from the Imperial period. Also see Pliny's generous gift to his nurse in her old age (Ep. 6. 3). Return to essay
76 Cic. ad Att. 7. 2. Return to essay
77 On trade and industry generally, Treggiari, 91-106; on the Arrentine potters, 91-94. Return to essay
78 Clarence A. Forbes, "The Education and Training of Slaves in Antiquity," Transactions of the American Philological Association 86 (1955): 359. Return to essay
79 Treggiari, 252-55. Return to essay
80 Ibid., 13-19. Return to essay
81 For example, Cic. ad Fam. 14. 4. Return to essay
82 Treggiari, 19. Return to essay
83 Ibid., 16. Return to essay
84 Cic. ad Fam. 16. 16. The concern and affection which the Cicero family lavished on Tiro can be seen throughout their correspondence, especially in Cic. ad Fam. 16. 1-27. Return to essay
85 Ep. 8. 16. Contradictorily, slaves were also seen as their master's worse enemies. See for example: Livy 3. 16. 3; Sen. Ep. 47. And in the Imperial period also see the senatus consultum Silanianum (A.D. 10) in J.D. 29. 5. 1-34. Return to essay
86 ad Fam. 14. 4. Also see ibid., 4. 9, 13. 23, 13. 70. Return to essay Return to essay
87 ILS 8283 = CIL 14. 1271. Translation from Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery. Return to essay
88 Patterson, 212. Return to essay
89 Ant. Rom. 4. 23. Return to essay
90 For another more exaggerated, comic version of such a zealous conversion, see Petron. Sat. 57. Return to essay
91 Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969), 166-70. Return to essay
92 App. B Civ. 2. 17. 120. Return to essay
93 See Justinian, Code, 6 (hereafter J.C.); J.D. 37 and 38 (entire). Return to essay
94 On lawsuits: J.C. 6. 6. 1; J.D. 37. 15. 2, 6, 7. On supporting needy patrons: J.C. 6. 2. 1. Return to essay
95 G.I. 3. 41. However, this edict cannot be definitely dated to the Republican period. See above, p. 19. Return to essay
96 Livy 39. 19. Return to essay
97 Treggiari, 37-68. Return to essay
98 Watson, Slave Law, 39. Return to essay
99 G.I. 3. 41. Return to essay
100 Ibid., 3. 42-44. Return to essay
101 Ibid., 1. 29, 32a. Return to essay
102 Ant. Rom. 4. 23. Return to essay
103 Patterson, 293-96. Return to essay
104 James L. Watson, "Slavery as an Institution, Open and Closed Systems," in Asian and African Systems of Slavery, ed. James L. Watson (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980): 6-12. Return to essay
105 Ibid., 9. Return to essay
106 Ibid., 8-9. See Patterson's response, 296. Return to essay
107 Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery, 3, 13, 45-49, 57; quote from Wiedemann, "Regularity of Manumission," 162. Return to essay
108 Ibid., "Regularity of Manumission," 175. Return to essay
109 Wiedemann, "Regularity of Manumission," 175; Treggiari, 238-39. Return to essay