Where Rome differed from Greece was that slaves could be freed and their descendants become full citizens. So when, in an area where citizenship was rare, as it still was in the first century ad, we come across a Roman citizen of middling status who is not Italian, the most likely reason is that he is descended from a freed slave. This was probably the reason why the apostle Paul enjoyed citizenship at a time when it was virtually unknown even among the elite of Asia Minor. (A view argued by Jerome Murphy O’Connor in his biographies of Paul.)
Manumission was an ancient concept found as far back as the Twelve Tables of the fifth century Bc. An owner could set a slave free by means of a declaration in front of the magistrate or through the terms of his will. Alternatively a slave could buy his freedom, if the owner agreed, by offering the owner compensation from whatever he might have saved. The number of slaves an owner could free through a will was, however, limited by a law of Augustus. An owner of between thirty and a hundred slaves could free no more than a quarter of them, one with over a hundred slaves only a fifth. Manumission brought freedom for only a minority of slaves and inevitably those who were freed during an owner’s lifetime tended to be those who had earned his respect. Cicero’s freedman Tiro enjoyed the genuine affection of his former master. The freedman was subject to some continuing restrictions, in his choice of marriage partners (marriages between freedmen and freedwomen were common) and in the way he could leave his wealth, but his children enjoyed the full rights of any citizen.
Most freedmen remained close to their previous owners and were supported by them in their new lives, often as tradesmen and craftsmen in the cities, and even buried in their family tombs. In return their former owners could expect complete loyalty. This explains why emperors such as Claudius used freedmen so extensively. Traditional Romans, however, viewed the rise of the freedman to a position of wealth with horror. Again, the depiction of Trimalchio in Petronius’ Satyricon is the classic example from literature. The old arguments enunciated by Theognis 700 years earlier (see p. 230), that no amount of wealth could create nobility, reappear in this context. Seneca recorded with horror the case of a former master calling on the home of his manumitted slave and being refused admittance by the now arrogant freedman! However, the Romans were a pragmatic people and ancestry could be forgotten at times of crisis. Horace’s father was a freedman, his son ended up as an intimate of Augustus. The philosopher Epictetus was born a slave in Asia (in the middle of the first century ad), suffering the extra handicap of being lame. Yet after being freed he spent much time in Rome mingling with the elite and later in his life he may even have been introduced to Hadrian. The emperor Diocletian may have himself been a freed slave or at least the son of one.
World History
