Manumission

1. Manumission

2. Forms of formal manumission • 1. manumissio vindicta: by a mock trial • 2. manumissio censu: by sensus • 3. manumissio testamento: by testament

3. Manumissio vindicta • Mock trial • Owner appeared with another Roman citizen before magistrate who had imperium. The citizen acted as adsertor liberatis and declared the free status of the slave; when owner did not contest this claim, the adsertor touched the slave with the rod (festuca or vindicta) and at same time said the formula: “hunc ego hominem liberum esse aio ex iure Quiritium” (I declare this man to be free according to the law of the Roman citizens). • The magistrate then confirms that the slave is free. • Note: this procedure implies that the person had been wrongly enslaved and was now restored to his/her rightful status through this trial

4. manumissio censu • Slave is entered into census record. • Note: less fictional, but nevertheless an entry into the census represents also an uncontested claim that the person was really a free citizen. • Represents a renewal of an entry – since the censor only records the fact that the person is a citizen - he does not make him/her a citizen.

5. manumissio testamento • Common formula: “Stichus servus meus liber esto.” (My slave Stichus shall be free). • Note: Important that the owner’s intention was clear and the formula without ambiguity so that the statement of the slave’s free status could not be taken as an admission of wrongful enslavement which could lead to demand restitutio natalium (restitution of free-born status) and not manumission.

6. What do these procedures to manumit slaves suggest to you about how Romans perceived the act of manumitting slaves?

7. Manumission and the Roman Social Hierarchy • Social Status based on birth and property; ideal did not include concept of social mobility like modern concept of ‘the American Dream’. • Basic opposites: free and unfree • Category of free is subdivided into free (ingenuus) and freed (libertus) • Freed remain separate from the free-born • Carried trace of slave-status, setting them apart from free-born • Macula servitutis (stigma of slavery) which could rub off on others

8. The senator’s wife • According to Valerius Maximus 6.3.11 • A senator divorced his wife after he had caught her engaged in a private conversation with a common freedwoman (libertina vulgari) in public

9. Suetonius on Augustus • “ He gave dinner parties constantly and always formally,with great regard to the rank and personality of his guests. Valerius Messala writes that he never invited a freedman to dinner with the exception of Menas, and then only when he had been enrolled among the freeborn after betraying the fleet of Sextus Pompey. “ (Suet. Aug. 74)

10. The Augustan Legislation • Lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus 18 BC • Iulian law on marriage among the orders • Banned senators and their descendants from marrying freedwomen, actresses or infames. • Infamia – loss of status due to dishonourable profession/action: gladiators, actors, adulteresses. • Same status as subject foreigners (peregrini dediciti), men who had fought in a war against Rome, were defeated, surrendered, and could never become Roman citizens or Latins, could not make a will, could not receive anything through a will • Note: The stain of slavery was considered similar to the stain attached to infamia • Legislation reflects need to prevent contamination of highest order of Roman citizens

11. What exactly did the Romans mean by the macula servitutis

12. The macula servitutis • Slaves were associated with ‘servile traits’ in character, mentality and body • Fortuna could make anyone (or most) a slave. Yet - Romans had no notion of essential equality between all human beings; • Slavery itself could change a person, the ultimate state of dependency and subjection to someone else’s reduced a person’s honour and moral judgment • Slaves not considered inferior in intellect, but perceived as lacking in rationality and moral maturity. • Ideal was that only free, unfettered mind could make morally informed decisions.

13. Roman construction of slave as morally deficient and without honour common in most slave societies. • Common tendency to despise subjects for their servility and submission

14. Beings without honour • Pater familias – had potestas vitae necisque (power over life and death) limited in practice to small children only • Physical punishment of adult sons was unacceptable since it put them on same level as slave • No restrictions of master’s potestas over slaves, slave body had no protection from violence including sexual exploitation • Even a freedwoman could not be a victim of stuprum committed by her patron • Likely that social expectation existed that slaves and perhaps (in some circumstances) also freed people would be sexually available • Violability of the slave’s body central to the construction of the servile person: Scars, branding marks, tattoos were signs of slavery but also of a servile mind. • This servile stereotype had the function to maintain the slave system by setting slaves apart from the free and reinforce the social hierarchy with its distinct categories

15. How does manumission fit into this construct? How was it possible to manumit a slave and integrate him/her into the free citizen body?

16. Fundamental problem - manumission compromised the basic boundary between free and slave • Manumission practiced in most slave societies, although less frequent • Rome unique in that ex-slave was made citizen (or Latin) in terms of civic status they made them equals • Athens - ex-slaves became metics= resident aliens • American slaves received lesser civic status • North America – manumission extremely rare or banned in some states.

17. The ‘servile’ citizen • Romans had strategies to overcome the problem of having ‘servile’ individuals (damaged by slavery) cross the boundary between slavery and freedom • Manumission had to be selective – only the ‘less damaged’ qualified • Close connection between treatment of slave and his/her moral development (more skilled) • Slave commonly referred to as a puer (boy, child) • A slave had to be educated and arrive at a level of maturity that raised him above the other slaves.

18. Attitudes towards manumission • Often hostility - expressed by regulations • Sources complain of abuses of manumissions: criminal slaves bying freedom through robbery, burglary, prostitions (Dio Halicarnassus 4.24.4-8) • Others were freed to benefit from grain dole • Some owners accused to be self-indulgent when manumitting large numbers of slaves (posthumous popularity) • Many source reflect a conviction that uncontrolled manumission leads to the contamination of citizen body by admitting unworthy slaves into it.

19. Augustus legislation on manumission • Attempt to reinforce social hierarchy and boundaries between free and slave • LexAeliaSentia 4 AD: • Excluded all ex-slaves from becoming citizens at manumission who had been chained by owners as punishment, were branded, publicly interrogated under torture, found guilty, fought in the arena, sent to gladiatorial school, were imprisoned. • This group received status of peregrinidediticii(deffeated and surrendered foreigners, Gaius Inst. 1.13-6) • Were also banned from Rome – had to live beyond 100 milestone • Also basic requirements for manumission: slave had to be age 30; owner age 20 – to avoid indiscriminate manumission.

20. Augustus rules on testamentary manumission • LexFufiaCaninia, 2 BC • Limits on manumissiotestamento • Households between 2-10 slaves, half could be manumitted • 10-30 - a third • 30 – 100 - a quarter • 100 – 500 a fifth • Upper limit of 100 to largest households • All slaves had to be mentioned by name – no en-bloc manumissions

21. Suetonius on Augustan legislation • Suet. Aug. 40.3, Loeb translation • Considering it also of great importance to keep the people pure and unsullied by any taint of foreign or servile blood, he was most chary of conferring Roman citizenship and set a limit to manumission. • **Suet. Aug. 40.4, Loeb translation • Not content with making it difficult for slaves to acquire freedom, and still more so for them to attain full rights, by making careful provision as to the number, condition, and status of those who were manumitted, he added the proviso that no one who had ever been put in irons or tortured should acquire citizenship by any grade of freedom.

22. Abuses of manumission in the late Republic • Gaius Gracchus and his associate C. FulviusFlaccus said to have made offer to slaves in tumult which preceded their own deaths: in 89 BC senate en bloc offered freedom as reward to any slaves who would bring info to light on assassination t Rome of the praetor A. SemproniusAsellio; • at battle of Colline Gate slaves offered freedom for their support of the Marians agains Sulla, who himself was later said to have liberated 10,000 men to serve as his own personal bodygard; • ** L. Cornelius Cinna twice offered slaves their freedom at times of civil commotion • App. BC 1.26; 54; 58; 65; 69; 74; 100. • Sex. Pompeius used to offer freedom for slaves’ help against their masters in Africa; • ** members of second triumvirate offered freedom and cash to informants • ** Octavian liberated some 20,000 slaves to serve as rowers in campaign against Pompeius, claiming himself in Res Gestae to have restored to their owners 30,000 slaves who had absconded to fight in late civil wars on promise of manumission • App. BC 4.7, 11, 36, 95, 131; Suet. Aug. 16.1. Caes BC 1.57; Dio 41.38.3; RG 25.1; Oros. 5.12.6.

23. The philosopher Epictetus was himself an ex-slave: • Then he (the slave) is emancipated, and forthwith, having no place to which to go and eat, he looks for someone to flatter, for someone at whose house to dine. Next he either earns a living by prostitution, and so endures the most dreadful things, and if he gets a manger at which to eat he has fallen into a slavery much more severe than the first: or even if he grows rich, being a vulgarian he has fallen in love with a chit of a girl, and is miserable, and laments, and yearns for his slavery again.” Why, what was wrong with me? Someone else kept me in clothes, and shoes, and supplied me with food, and nursed me when I was sick: I served him in only a few matters. But now, miserable man that I am, what suffering is mine who am a slave to several instead of one!” (Epictetus, Diss. 4.1.35-37, Loeb translation)

24. Qualifying for manumission • Columella R.R. 1.8.19, Loeb translation • To women, too, who are unusually prolific, and who ought to be rewarded for the bearing of a certain number of offspring. I have granted exemption from work and sometimes even freedom after they had reared many children. For to a mother of three sons exemption from work was granted: to a mother of more her freedom as well.”