The Freedman in the Roman World by Henrik Mouritsen (review)

Given the size of the slave and freedman populations in the ancient world, and the extent to which these individuals were entangled in nearly every aspect of the Roman quotidian experience, there can be no hope of properly grasping that universe without a thorough appreciation of its liberti. Mouritsen has produced what is, to my taste, the most important book we now have on this topic.¹ Since there are already excellent reviews easily available, I will attempt to illustrate the richness of this contribution by illustrating briefly two aspects of The Freedman: (a) Mouritsen’s approach (in chapter 4) to the Augustan legislation on manumission, and (b) his description of libertine self-perceptions (chapter 8).² What can be accomplished in the space available, though, is the merest adumbration of this book’s offerings.

We read that Romans perceived manumission as a growing up of the infantilized slave. Having conceptually been given birth into a new social life by his former master, the libertus then remained quite literally a part of the family, and did so much as if he were now a son in potestate. We are, however, reminded that there was a decidedly civic component here; for private individuals, by manumitting their own slaves, were thereby creating new Roman citizens. Thus, the dominus notionally shouldered a huge responsibility to free only the best sorts. This all leads Mouritsen to suggest that the Augustan statutory actions concerning manumission “ . . . might be better understood as official declarations which emphasized the need for proper selection and ‘quality’ control in the manumission process” (84). And then, “ . . . the real focus and overriding concern of the Augustan legislation was the freedman’s civic status rather than manumission as such [i.e., merely the numbers of slaves set free]; for what Augustus did limit—or at least regulate—was their access to Roman citizenship” (88). But, why was this suddenly a concern to Augustus? Here, Mouritsen points out the fact that “ . . . the age-old practice of enfranchising servants released from servitude had begun to look increasingly anomalous; it raised the question how Rome could justify withholding from provincial leaders a privilege that was granted as a matter of course to any slave freed by a Roman citizen” (90–91). In short, the legislation on manumission is to be seen as part and parcel of Augustus’ punctilious discrimina ordinum. Indeed, this all had become necessary because, “[w]hat had happened ideologically was that the concept of the free res publica had in effect been divorced from political power and now resided entirely in the hierarchical organization of society” (105).

The final chapter begins by arguing that the modern perception of the Roman freedman has been significantly distorted by the ancient (elite) literary picture: unsavory parvenus, like the boorish Trimalchio, who were devoted exclusively to tiresome social climbing. Thus, the burial monuments of these individuals are usually seen as instruments for establishing and advertising a new social place in the world. As Mouritsen points out, however, the supposition that liberti should have fashioned something like a collective identity for themselves around one issue seems potentially reductive; where the inscriptions are concerned, he notes that very many of these stood originally in contexts which would not generally have been accessible a broader community. This leads him to raise the issue of family. Manumission brought a previously nonexistent security to the families of former slaves, and Mouritsen suggests that we ought to see in the many preserved burial monuments of freedmen a celebration of this newfound sense of familial well-being. This position deserves very careful consideration by all those studying freedmen, or the funerary epigraphy of these individuals, or indeed, the whole phenomenon of epigraphy under the early Principate. Those interested in the history of emotions will also find much of value here.

The present remarks offer only the barest inkling of what can be discovered in this book. In short, anyone seeking to understand...