A Study Of Freed Slaves In The Early Roman Empire

A freedman was a slave who had been manumitted.In ancient Rome,in the early Roman empire,manumission was a common practice,The legal freeing of large numbers of slaves who then became Roman citizens was a distinctive feature of Roman society,opening up an avenue of social mobility and renewal of the citizen body.When in AD 56 the senate debated whether patrons should have the right to re-enslave disrespectful freedmen,a counter-argument was that most equites and many senators were descended from freedmen,who were everywhere.This paper consists of four chapters.The first chapter begins from regulating Previously uncontrolled manumission.In the early Roman empire,Lex Fufia Caninia and Lex Aelia Sentia limited manumission.All these regulations illustrate the perceived need for manumission to be selective and reflect a careful assessment by their master.Productive financial success and devoted personal service were the main causes of the manumission.Chapter two tries to deal with manumission patterns and the actual status.There were three formal manumission: manumissio vindicta,censu,and testamento,which would grant a slave both legal freedom and Roman citizenship.The lex Aelia Sentia thus defined a minimum threshold for freedmen to become full Roman citizens.Then analyzes relationship between freedmen and former masters,Manumission merely redefined their relationship rather than bringing an end to it.Former masters did not hold any formal authority over their freedmen,he did enjoy certain rights and privileges.Freedmen were in a state of dependency on their former masters,who should respect and gratitude their former masters in all lifetime and could not bring a lawsuit against former masters.Former masters enjoyed a specified number of days' work and had inheritance rights from freedman.Former masters also should protect their freedmen.Their relationship was mutual,but it was not equal.This paper consists of four chapters.The third chapter analyzes that freedmen played an important part in economy,politics and culture of Roman society,even as they were subject to intense social prejudice.Freedmen's inclusion in the citizen body and their responses to enfranchisement are shown to have been integral to the development of the Roman citizenship and to the definition of the civic community.The familia Caesaris came tosymbolize the Principate and to propagate the ideology of empire.during the early Empire,when elite values were being reconfigured to accommodate the rise of Principate,The imperial elite adapted the virtues of deference and industry from freed culture,as they renegotiated traditional concepts of honor and glory.I conclude that freed culture did not simply imitate that of the ruling orders but rather participated in shaping ideology under the Principate.The last one analyzes female slaves,who relied more on their personal relationships with their owners and fellow salves than on their material production in order to achieve manumission.In the early Roman empire,Roman lawmakers reinforced the value of the lifestyle and labor of female slaves,by emphasizing marriage and childbirth as foundational elements in their developing structure of citizen manumission.Freedmen' families were mixed,because some freedmen had already formed unions before being freed,some found new spouses after manumission.Roman laws treated concubinage as a conjugal relationship akin to marriage,which was permanent,monogamous,and encouraged concubinage between a male patron and his freedwoman.