Roman Freedmen

This paper investigates the distinctiveness of Roman freedmen (liberti) in provincial contexts where Roman-style manumission contrasted with local customs. I suggest that manumission may have functioned as a marker of political and cultural identity for patrons and freedmen alike. Greek discussions of the Roman slave system emphasize the unique practice of enfranchising slaves who had been liberated through formal channels (SIG³ 543; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.22).

Recent scholarship has underlined the significance of costume with respect to self-representation in the Roman world in terms of both personal adornment and visual art. Discussions of the toga in particular often center on elite traditions, for it is their interests which drove both the history and the development of the toga. Yet the power of the toga as a marker of civic identity must have resonated especially with Roman freedmen, for whom it embodied not only citizenship, but also the restoration of legal personhood achieved through manumission.

Despite exponentially increasing attempts to break down analytical boundaries between freedmen on the one hand, and freeborn members of the plebs media on the other, the assumption of a status-specific discourse on freedmen has been consistently left unchallenged.

Studies on freedmen in the Roman world have focused extensively on the legal process of manumission and on the standing of freed slaves in the community. I am much more interested in how slaves experienced the transition from slave to freedman and what they did in order to fit into their – new or old – environment once they had gained their freedom. Within that period of uncertain length it is unknown how they were treated by their fellow-citizens. If they were artisans, did they perhaps suffer loss of income because freeborn customers declined to pay?