Freedom

In the midst of ties and emotions of family, friends, and religion, the slave always feared separation through sale. The fear was real, a constant presence in his life. The best way out was to gain freedom. The desire for freedom consumed slaves. Despite the potential loss of some security, as The guard in Plautus’ play The Prisoners (119) says, 'I’m sure we’d all rather be free than slaves.’ In The Life of Aesop, Aesop is constantly asking his master to free him - the master, Xanthus, promises repeatedly, but reneges just as frequently. As I interpret Lucius’ adventures as an ass in Apuleius novel to be a palimpsest for a life of slavery, the rose that Lucius needs to eat in order to regain his human form (and, as it turns out, salvation at the feet of Isis) is freedom itself. The Carmen Astrologicum gives many castings that indicate that a slave will be freed; Artemidorus interprets dreams to promise the same thing. There are many inscriptions set up by freed slaves and many references in elite literature to them. In this one, an ex-slave gives thanks for divine help:

13. Free at last. A public manumission ceremony declares a slave free. Note the freedman’s cap.

Dedicated to the Spirit of the Annii Macer and Licinianus. I, Alphios their slave, set thi up to fulfill my vow - I am now free! (CIL 12.619, Auriol, France)

Manumission was the route to freedom. Masters controlled this almost completely - the only exception was being able somehow to prove your improper enslavement and so free status before a magistrate. The masters often held out the promise of freedom as an incentive to get slaves to do What they wanted them to do - although it is interesting to note that the agricultural writers do not include this promise among the rewards they suggest to encourage slaves. Slaves could be freed through the declaration of the master before friends or before a magistrate, through self-purchase, or by testament. If officially manumitted before a magistrate they received a document proving this (Digest 3.2.8.1). Although contracts for manumission are known from Egypt, the actual document proving freedom has rarely been found. There are a few examples in Greek; here is a Latin one:

Marcus Aurelius Ammonion, son of Lupergos, son of Sarapion, from Hermupolis th Greater, ancient and splendid, declares in the presence of his friends that Helen, his house-raised slave, age about 34 years, is no longer to be a slave and to now be fTee. He received as the price of her freedom 2,200 Augustan drachmas from Aurelius Ales, son o: Inarous, from the Tisicheos district of the Hermupolite nome. Ales, son of Inarous, gav the money to Helen the aforementioned fTeedwoman and will make no claim for it against her. Done at Hermupolis the Greater, ancient and splendid, on the seventh day before the Kalens of August, when Gratus and Seleucus were consuls, in the third regnal year o Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius Fortunate Revered. (M. Chr. 372)

In theory a freed slave could produce a document like this, but it was written on perishable material - an incised waxed tablet enclosed by wooden plates inscribed in pen and ink - so it was unlike another type of 'manumission,’ the discharge of a solder from service, which was written in bronze. There does not seem to be any reference in fiction or elsewhere to a manumitted slave producing a document as proof of his freedom. When a master does try to reclaim a runaway, the man is identified by physical features, and the statement that he could not produce a liberation document is never mentioned. Thus although in theory this sort of identification could have made it harder for a runaway to escape successfully - or easily forged to prove freedom - it does not seem to figure importantly. Freedom itself, however, was celebrated happily when it occurred. In one club that had both free and slave members, the newly freed slave was to bring an amphora of wine to the next meeting - the equivalent of three cases of the stuff - to lubricate a fine celebration of a great event (ILS 7212, Lanuvio, Italy).

Certainly not all slaves were eventually freed; many died in harness. Probably few males were freed before the age of thirty (although the Egyptian evidence may contradict this), and few females before the end of their childbearing years (early forties). And to judge by comparative material, slaves in urban households were much more likely to be freed than those in the countryside. Still, slaves could see freedmen around them; the possibility of manumission could be real or remote, but at the very least, to judge from fiction and nonfiction sources and, most of all, from the slaves’ voices reflected in the fortune-telling material, it figured prominently in a slave’s mind as he contemplated his life and options.