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Fragment of a marble relief (1st century BC) depicting a manumission ceremony and the wearing of the pileus, a felt cap that was a symbol of liberation

Periodization of Roman History

• Terminology and dates as used in this article
• Regal 753–509 BC (semilegendary)
• Republican 509–27 BC

  Early Republic 509–280s/260s BC

  Middle Republic 280s–146 BC

  Classical, 2nd century BC–2nd century AD

  Late Republic 146–44 BC

• Imperial 27 BC–AD 313

  Principate 27 BC–AD 284

  Augustan era 27 BC–AD 14

  Pax Romana 1st–2nd century AD

  Christianization beginning AD 313

  Reign of Constantine I AD 306–337

  Late antiquity AD 313–mid 7th century
• Early Byzantine Empire 330–636

  Reign of Theodosius 379–395

  Reign of Justinian 527–565

In ancient Roman law, manumissio was the act of releasing a slave from the master's control. Manumission could occur either through formal legal procedures, resulting in the freedperson receiving citizenship; or informally, which resulted in a more legally ambiguous status. The possibility of manumission with a path to citizenship was a distinguishing feature of slavery in ancient Rome.

Although people enslaved for manual labor had little or no hope of manumission, for slaves in the upper echelon of skills and responsibilities—such as artisans, business managers, and "intellectual slaves"— manumission was a more realistic prospect. These slaves most often were freed in the master's will or bought their liberty through their earnings. Slaves who served the emperor's household or the imperial bureaucracy were regularly freed in their early thirties with considerable wealth and influence.

Overview

The general term for a manumitted slave was libertus or liberta (masculine or feminine), a freedperson. Former slaves were libertini as a social class, though later writers used the terms libertus and libertinus interchangeably. When slaves were granted liberty, their former master became their patron (patronus or patrona), and the two had mutual obligations by custom that would also be written up as part of a legally binding manumission contract. More fundamentally, the freedperson gained legal personhood, the lack of which denied slaves the standing to own property and enter into lawful marriage, among many other debilities.

Gravesite marker (2nd century AD) for the wool merchant Titus Aelius Evangelus, likely the freedman of Antoninus Pius or a son of such, along with his second wife, Ulpia Fortunata; Ulpius Telesphorus, of likely Trajanic freedman lineage and a conlibertus or relative of the wife; his natural daughter with his first wife, Gaudenia Marcellina; and his freedmen and freedwomen and their descendents

Manumission law was highly complex, and the intricacies of case law indicate wide variance in the legal and social circumstances among slaves and freedpersons. Sometimes a citizen owner freed a slave and adopted him as his heir, or freed the slave in his will and left him the estate. A master (dominus or less often domina) might also free and then marry the former slave, within certain parameters of social rank and gender. Imperial slaves—those who served the emperor's household or were in civil service, often in positions of great responsibility—were regularly manumitted between the ages of 30 and 35.

In the Imperial era, manumission was increasingly regulated in ways that variously benefitted or hampered patrons and freedpersons. Three laws associated with the reign of Augustus, the first emperor, were especially consequential. The Lex Iunia Norbana, of uncertain date (either 17 BC or AD 19), clarified the status of informally manumitted slaves as not fully free and prescribed penalties for freedpersons who fell short in fulfilling their manumission contracts. The Lex Fufia Caninia of 2 BC restricted the number of slaves who could be freed in a master's will. In AD 4 the Lex Aelia Sentia set age restrictions for formal manumission on both master and slave. With its detailed examples of cases discussed by Roman jurists, W. W. Buckland's The Roman Law of Slavery: The Condition of the Slave in Private Law from Augustus to Justinian (1908) remains a standard reference in English on manumission law built upon by later studies, such as those of Alan Watson and Thomas Wiedemann.

There were several procedural forms of manumission. During the Republican era, the liberti manumitted by one of three legally binding forms could not have their liberty revoked. But in addition to the Augustan legislation that had specified penalties for those who failed to live up to the terms of manumission, Constantine I permitted patrons to reenslave a freedman found guilty of ingratitude, among other reforms pertaining to family law and social status as the Empire became Christianized. Although Imperial legislation offered some protections for slaves and freedpersons and improved their circumstances, the economic interests of owners remained a driving concern.

Meaningful estimates of the percentage of slaves who could expect manumission cannot be made from the insufficient data available. Because freedmen were by definition those who had the ability and means to obtain liberty, through their self-commemoration they are much better represented in the historical record, making manumission seem a greater possibility than it actually was for the vast majority of slaves employed in manual labor.

The familia and social position

Main article: Slavery in ancient Rome

Former slaves played a significant role in Roman society as early as the semilegendary period when Rome was ruled by kings, and more definably in the early Republic. The Greek historian Dionysius credits Servius Tullius with instituting manumission law, "but as he refers nearly everything else to that king," Buckland observed, "no particular weight attaches to his testimony." In his Augustan-era history of Rome, Livy tells of a slave granted freedom for faithful service in 509 BC, the traditional year for the founding of the Republic. The presence of former slaves as citizens is assumed in Rome's earliest legal code, the Twelve Tables (450/451 BC).

Portrait in high relief (AD 110–120) of Petronia Hedone and her adolescent son, Lucius Petronius Philemon, on a funerary monument she built for them to share with her freedmen, freedwomen, and their descendants (MFA Boston)

Domestic slaves in an urban household (domus) or rural estate (villa) were part of a familia, the body of a household's dependents — a word primarily referring to the slaves collectively and only later to the "family" in the modern sense. Although the legal status of slaves within the familia was not distinct from that of a slave treated as a "mere means of production" (instrumentum), slaves who advanced the master's quality of life were far more likely to obtain freedom than those who served bare economic interests. Manumission in practice thus skews towards slaves treated as members of the household; those given administrative license to act as business managers; and slaves who offered entertainment or companionship, especially intellectual companionship.

Rome was patriarchal; the paterfamilias (head of the house) was entitled to administer ad hoc justice within his estate, including the right to control, sell, or even kill not only his slaves but also his children, who remained minors regardless of age until his death or unless legally emancipated. The position of the wife of the paterfamilias depended on what form of marriage they had contracted, but throughout the "core period" of Roman history (2nd century BC through 2nd century AD), a Roman woman had the right to own property, including slaves, and retained that property as her own within marriage. As domina, she exercised control over her own slaves, resulting in upper-class households of slaves owned by two different masters and complicating relations within the familia.

Funerary monument (AD 14–50) for a decurion of Mutina, Novius Lucius Apollinaris, and the liberta Novia Donatilla, depicted as the wife of the deceased's libertus, Lucius Novius Chryseros Apollinaris, who set up the monument and is also to be entombed there along with Novia Spatale, possibly their daughter (Estense Lapidary Museum of Modena)

Slaves were released from their master's control through manumissio, meaning literally a "sending from the hand," manus being a metaphor for possession. The English word "emancipation" comes from emancipatio, the equivalent act for releasing a son from his father's legal power (potestas). That manumissio and emancipatio are parallel in undoing the control of the paterfamilias is suggested by the legal fiction through which the latter occurred: technically, emancipatio was a sale of the minor son (mancipatio) three times at once, based on an archaic provision of the Twelve Tables that a son sold three times was freed of his father's potestas.

Though their social position was vastly different, slaves and unemancipated sons thus shared some legal debilities. For instance, as dependents they could not own property; any wealth they acquired ultimately belonged to the head of household. They could manage part of the family’s business through the instrument of peculium, a fund or property that enabled them to earn money that they could use as their own. The peculium could be used by the slave to purchase freedom.

Patronage

See also: Patronage in ancient Rome

The former master became the freedperson's patron. A freedman added his former master's family name to his slave name to form the tria nomina, the three-part name that had become conventional by the late Republic; for example, Tiro, the slave of Marcus Tullius Cicero, became Marcus Tullius Tiro. Roman naming conventions for women differed from those of men, but generally a freedwoman would attach the gens (family) name of her former master. In family tombs, inscriptions often specify that freedpersons and their descendants were included among the family members who could be laid to rest there.

Freedpersons could establish themselves in business by networking through the patronage system and contacts made during their servitude. One model of the patron-freedman business relationship envisions the patron making use of the freedman as a middleman and then using his influence to get the freedman's son onto a municipal council, elevating the family's rank. But freedmen also had recourse to trade organizations, neighborhood associations, religious or quasi-religious sodalities such as the augustales, and other forms of collegia in advancing their career. Colliberti, freedmen who had served as slaves under the same owner, might support one another and go into business together.

The manumission contract

A manumission contract arranged between a living master/patron and slave/freedperson usually specified either a purchase price, which was deducted from the peculium, or operae (services, tasks, or projects) that the freedperson was bound to carry out. Manumission granted in a will might also be contingent on the fulfillment of similar terms. Typical conditions would be payment of a substantial amount of money to compensate the owner for the loss of the "asset", or specified services or tasks (operae) the freedperson was obligated to perform. A master might free a slave for services already rendered without payment or stipulations of operae, but no-strings generosity would have been unusual. A poorly attested praetorian edict of Rutilius Rufus (ca. 118 BC) may have been an effort to cap the amount that could be demanded of a slave in exchange for freedom.

The slave who purchased liberty outright seems to have been able to relocate as he pleased and may have had no obligation to perform specific operae. During the Imperial era, a manumission agreement could be enforced so that the owner didn't renege.

A passage from the Controversiae of Seneca the Elder has been widely taken out of context by scholars of Roman sexual practices between males to mean that operae could require sexual service. However, these anthologized speeches are meant to be examples of rhetorical tactics, and the sardonic use of officium ("duty") rather than opera in the legal defense of a freedman is most likely "a rhetorician's unlucky flight of fancy." One of the fundamental distinctions between the enslaved and the free was that the latter were not subject to sexual exploitation, and freedpersons could not legally be compelled to perform unlawful or immoral acts in service to their patron.

Statuses of libertini

Augustan legislation may or may not have succeeded in limiting the demographic impact of former slaves on society, and its intention and effects are debatable. But it did clarify three statuses of libertini as a class that had not been so distinct in the Republican era.

Cives Romani liberti

Inscription from the base of a statue honoring the imperial freedman Publius Aelius Liberalis as the patron of the vicus Augustanus in Ostia, where he held several governmental positions up to that of procurator of the grain supply (annona)

Slaves who had been owned by Roman citizens and freed by them through one of the three recognized legal procedures (a iusta manumissio) became citizens themselves, with the right to own property, to make a will and pass along generational wealth, and to enter into legally recognized forms of marriage with another free person. As a free Roman woman, the liberta held these same citizen rights. That citizen status was awarded from the earliest period of the Roman Republic is indicated by the reference to cives Romani liberti ("Roman citizens who are freedmen") in the Twelve Tables (mid-5th century BC).

Some limitations were placed on the freedman, aimed primarily at preventing him from achieving senatorial rank regardless of his individual achievement and wealth. The libertus could vote, but he was not eligible for the "career track" magistracies or state priesthoods in the city of Rome. But freedmen in Rome could hold neighborhood and local offices which entitled them to wear the toga praetexta, ordinarily reserved for those of higher rank, for ceremonial functions and their funeral rites. Julius Caesar had directed in at least one colonial charter that freedmen could not be barred from attaining the rank of decurion. In the Roman provinces, inscriptions indicate that former slaves could be elected to all offices below the rank of praetor in their towns, both in municipia and later in coloniae — a fact obscured by elite literature and ostensible legal barriers. It has been estimated that about 20 percent of local aristocracies in Italy were of slave descent.

Legal limitations were placed only on the freed slave; they did not apply to his sons [EXCEPT THERE WAS A BAN AT SOME TIME BARRING THE SONS OF FREEDMEN FROM SENATORIAL RANK], who were regarded as ingenui (freeborn citizens), and some sons of freedmen are known to have gone on to become senators.[DESPITE THE AFOREMENTIONED]

Like freeborn Roman women, libertae had private rights that gave them the protections and liabilities of Roman citizenship, but not the privileges of public life, meaning that they could neither hold public office nor vote. An exception was the highly public role of the Vestals, the state priesthood reserved exclusively for women. Eligibility was originally restricted to women from patrician families but by the end of the Republic had been opened up to plebeians; near the end of Augustus's reign, the daughters of citizen freedmen were eligible for election to this priesthood.

In the provinces, existing laws governing social rank determined the status of manumitted slaves freed by owners who did not hold Roman citizenship. In Roman Egypt, a Greek-imposed social organization was already in place with laws pertaining to taxation and privileges, which were redesigned under Roman rule rather than eradicated – for example, the metropolite order was created as a "fiscally privileged" group whose tax obligation was lighter. A slave formally manumitted by a Roman citizen living in Egypt became a Roman citizen; a slave freed by an Egyptian acquired the Greco-Egyptian social status of the former owner; and a slave freed by the Roman-created order of metropolitai was entitled to register for their exemptions.

Latini Iuniani

Junian Latins – so called because their status was codified by a lex Iunia – were informally manumitted slaves who existed in a sort of "half-way house between slavery and freedom". They were released from forced labor but held a form of Latin rights rather than the full benefits of Roman citizenship. Their status was modeled on the ius Latii, which had been created for the Italian allies following the Social Wars. Latinitas ("Latinity") was a kind of citizenship not defined by the particular privileges of property ownership and office-holding that were embedded in the society, customs, and religion of the city of Rome.

The freedom gained by Junian Latins lay primarily in the right to self-direct and to benefit from their own labor; they gained the right to engage in commerce (ius commercii). There is some evidence that Junian Latins could also enter into a legal marriage (ius conubii), though most scholars think not. Junians did not have the right to make a will and create generational wealth for their family; when they died, their property was treated as peculium and reverted to their former master. Barring Roman citizens from providing for their family through succession would appear to be incompatible with Roman marriage and inheritance law and indicates the limitations of Junian freedom.

Junian Latins could earn full citizenship through a grant by the Roman people if they contributed to the state in certain specified capacities. These contributions included service to the city of Rome as vigiles (a sort of firefighting and police force), building a house in Rome, providing three years of grain milling for the dole, or adding to the citizenry by having a child. In this last procedure (anniculi probatio), Junian parents could present their biological child under one year of age to the praetor, and all three were recognized as citizens. A senatus consultum of uncertain Imperial date granted full citizenship to a Junian woman who bore three or more children, as an extension of the more general ius liberorum that gave Roman mothers who were citizens a privileged status.

Dediticii

Main article: Dediticii § Dediticii ex lege Aelia Sentia

Slaves who had been treated as criminals at any time during their servitude but then managed to be manumitted were dediticii, technically free but with no rights and permanently barred from holding citizenship. The jurist Gaius called the status of dediticius "the worst kind of freedom."

Likelihood of manumission

The earliest known Roman example of a freestanding half-figure bust (25–50 AD): funerary portrait of the freedman Gaius Aurunceis Princeps, wearing a toga and a ring on his left pinky finger (Royal Museums of Art and History)

Scholars have differed on the rate of manumission. Historian Walter Scheidel estimated that during the Principate, within every five-year period about 10 percent of the slave population would have been manumitted, and this estimate has not been widely contested. In general, manual laborers treated as chattel were least likely to be manumitted; skilled or highly educated urban slaves most likely. Slaves who were educators held certain privileges spelled out in law, including the opportunity to be manumitted under the age of thirty. Women may not have been able to expect manumission before menopause because of the value of their reproductive capacity, except for those manumitted expressly for the purpose of marrying, but following [[[some emperor's legislation]], women who had given birth to THREE OR FOUR??? children were to be rewarded with manumission.

Manumission after a period of service may have been a negotiated outcome of contractual slavery, though a citizen who had entered willingly into unfree servitude was barred from full restoration of his rights. Sales contracts that set a term of servitude typically range from one to five years. Augustus imposed a minimum term of twenty to thirty years on war captives who had shown resistance; if released from servitude, such freedmen would be classed as dediticii.

Slaves of the emperor's household (the familia Caesaris) were routinely manumitted at ages 30 to 35 – an age that should not be taken as standard for other slaves — the life stage at which male citizens left adolescence and the well-born entered the "career track" and became eligible to hold public office. But neither age nor length of service was automatic grounds for manumission.

Slaves employed in profitable activities had a better chance of negotiating terms of self-purchase. A slave who had a large enough peculium might also buy the freedom of a fellow slave, a contubernalis with whom he had cohabited or a partner in business. Especially among well-positioned imperial slaves, a high-earning male slave might choose to remain in his position while buying the liberty of his contubernalis; as a freedwoman, her children would be born free, though not legitimate. When her marriage partner reached the usual age of manumission (30–35) for imperial slaves, they could then be legally married, legitimate their children, and exercise the right to leave wealth to them.

Forms of manumissio

The many forms of manumission arise from the long and complex legal history of slaves and freedpersons, often obscured in sources that are more concerned with the history of the elite.

During the Roman Republic, three formal procedures of manumission had been long recognized by the state; a manumission carried out in one of these three ways was permanent and conferred citizenship. Republican manumission was an act of private law, but the state had an interest that lay in the creation of new citizens. Informal manumissions created ambiguities of status that were addressed by laws beginning in the late Republic and continuing through the Imperial era into the Christian empire of late antiquity. Imperial regulation of manumission transferred the Roman law of slavery from the private sphere to a matter of public law, much as Augustan moral legislation politicized family law in the "public interest".

Formal manumission

There were three kinds of legally binding manumission: by the “rod” (vindicta), by the census, and by the terms of the owner's will and testament; all three were ratified by the state. The freedman created from any of these three forms held full rights of citizenship as a civis Romanus libertus, though not a path to senatorial privileges. In the Classical period of Roman history, formal manumission could not be revoked by the patron, and Nero ruled that the state had no interest in doing so.

To qualify for one of these three forms of manumission, the slave had to have been purchased and owned through the legal procedure of mancipatio, which was reserved for citizens, called Quirites in traditional Roman political discourse. Quiritary ownership was a requirement for the slave to gain automatic citizenship upon manumission.

Manumissio vindicta

The Augustan historian Livy claims in an aetiological story that the first manumissio vindicta occurred in the first year of the Republic's existence, when a slave named Vindicius was rewarded with manumission and citizenship after exposing a plot to restore the monarchy. Although the etymology of vindicta from Vindicius is not linguistically sound, it expresses a belief that this form of manumission was older than the Twelve Tables and arose from a recognition of the slave's potential value to society.

The public ceremony of manumissio vindicta ("by the rod") had to be performed before a magistrate who held imperium. Mommsen and Buckland saw it as a fictitious trial adapted from the legal action for alleging unlawful enslavement of a free person (vindicatio in libertatem). The jurist Ulpian (d. 223/228 AD) indicates that the procedure had become more relaxed by his time, having observed a manumission under a praetor without even a lictor in attendance.

In the ceremony, the Roman citizen declared the slave free by pronouncing a formula, and touched or ritually struck the slave with a staff or wand, the vindicta, which was originally a stalk of grass (festuca). The magistrate confirmed the declaration. Literary sources mention the master grasping the slave by a "limb", slapping his cheek, and turning him around. The slap has been interpreted as the last blow of slavery, and the whirling (vertigo) or turning as representing the change of status, but these actions may have been customs rather than part of the legal formalities, as they are left unmentioned by juristic texts.

Because manumissio vindicta required ceremonial speaking, a master who was mute or deaf could not perform it. In that case, he could transfer ownership to a third party, a citizen of equal status, with a legally binding provision that the slave be formally manumitted by a certain date.

Manumissio censu

Further information: Roman census

Detail of the Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus (latter 2nd-century BC) thought to depict census-taking in the Campus Martius

The owner might also free the slave by allowing him to be entered in the official roll of citizens during census-taking. On principle, the censor had the unilateral power to free any slave to serve the interests of the state as a citizen.

The census of the Republic was taken in the Campus Martius in person. As a procedure for manumission, the slave would step up and make a claim of citizenship, the same professio that each citizen was obligated to make. Though not evidently a legal requirement, as a matter of custom and class deference the master was present to indicate that this action came at his bidding (iussum); Cicero calls this consent (consensus). Assent was directed at the slave and not the presiding censor, who did not require authorization and had the prerogative of accepting or refusing the claim. The third step was simply recording the name of the manumittee on the list of citizens.

Manumissio censu was thus a legal fiction that acknowledged the slave's claim to be a citizen as an uncontested fact rather than a direct conferral of citizenship. It usually took the full censorial term of eighteen months for the new lists to be put in order so that the censors could undertake the public ritual (lustrum condere) that brought them into effect, and the status of the new citizen in the interim is unclear. The freedman possibly was eligible to operate within the sphere of private law but not yet in public law.

This procedure was both straightforward and likely of great antiquity, but it could occur only during the taking of the census. The original Republican census—essentially a registration of citizens liable for taxation and of male citizens available to call up for military service—ceased to exist in the Empire except in the modern sense as a head count of the population. Since even under the best of circumstances the Republican census was taken only every five years (and in turbulent times not even then), manumissio censu would not have been a common way for a slave to become a citizen, and by the time of Domitian (reigned 81–96 AD) was likely defunct.

Manumissio testamento

Further information: Inheritance law in ancient Rome

Gravestone of the freedwoman Tyrania Philomatio, set up by her own freedwoman Chia for both of them (1st century AD)

Slaves could also be freed in their owner's last will and testament (manumissio testamento), sometimes on condition of service or payment before or after freedom. Testamentary manumission was the most important of the three legitimate forms in Roman law, and its antiquity is indicated by its presence in the Twelve Tables; it might be even older. The other two forms—vindicta and censu—are framed as legal fictions in which the slave asserts that he is already a citizen; testamentary manumission by contrast is conferred directly.

A slave rewarded with manumission in a will at times also received a bequest. If there was otherwise no rightful heir, a master might not only free the slave but make him the heir. An insolvent master might free a slave as his heres necessarius, an heir who took on the liabilities of the estate; the manumittee received full citizenship.

Heirs might choose to complicate testamentary manumission, and therefore a common condition was that the slave had to buy his freedom from the heir, so as not to reduce the value of the estate. Preserving the value of the estate for the heirs and protecting the claims of creditors seem also to have been motives for the cap placed by the lex Fufia Caninia of 2 BC on the number of slaves that could be released as a group by means of a will. This law, passed under Augustus, based the number of manumissions in proportion to the size of the familia:

• in a familia of three to ten slaves, no more than half could be released;
• of ten to thirty slaves, no more than a third;
• in an estate of thirty to one hundred slaves, no more than a quarter could be manumitted together;
• in an estate holding more than a hundred slaves, up to a fifth could be manumitted in a will, with a cap of one hundred slaves regardless of the size of the familia.

Slaves to be manumitted had to be listed by name in the will. Fugitive slaves were still to be inventoried as part of the estate. If they had been listed among those to be manumitted but had escaped after the will had been drawn up, the manumission seems to have remained valid.

The common scholarly view has been that a slave manumitted in his master's will received the peculium he had managed only if it was expressly transferred to him; otherwise, the peculium went to the heirs. At times, testamentary manumission was conditional (manumissio sub condicione)—the slave had to fulfill a condition, usually the payment of money to the heir, before the manumission could be formalized. During this “period of suspense”, the slave existed as a statutory freedman (statuliber) but could be sold; the condition for manumission remained attached to the sale, and he was to be manumitted by the new master once it was fulfilled. The manumission might also be fixed ex die, meaning that it became valid on a specified date.

Manumissio fideicommissaria or manumissio fiduciaria was a form of testamentary manumission in which the testator left instructions to the heir to manumit a slave through one of the formal procedures.

The commonplace that Roman slaves had no legal rights is not strictly true in regard to manumission. For example, a slave who was supposed to be manumitted by the terms of a will could seek the enforcement of his claim.

Informal manumission

Sarcophagus relief of Valerius Petronianus, with his slave holding writing tablets (4th century AD)

Freedom might also be granted informally, but during the Republic, it was established that these other forms of manumission did not confer citizen status. If the slave had been purchased in the course of ordinary trade (traditio rather than mancipatio), ownership of the slave was bonitary (in bonis, as goods) rather than quiritary (ex iure Quiritium, by the right of Roman citizens). A slave in bonitary ownership did not have an automatic path to citizenship.

Praetorian manumission (manumissio praetoria) was a response to the purchase and ownership of slaves outside the formal procedure of mancipatio. It was not enshrined in civil law (ius civile) but provided some oversight for slaves freed informally by making praetors responsible for protecting their liberty as non-slaves. The praetor's role was to prevent masters from bringing a "claim for reenslavement" (vindicatio in servitutem) and revoking their freedom. But the slave remained a servus rather than a libertus, he could not participate fully in the legal and political system, and his peculium still belonged to his master. Informally manumitted slaves lacked the right to make a will or to receive an inheritance—in short, possessed only limited property rights. Any children born to a woman who had been informally manumitted were slaves. So the sense in which these informal manumittees were “free” seems limited: they could not be forced to work, but could voluntarily accept work from their patron for pay. However, if they had agreed in advance to provide operae as a condition of manumission, there is some indication that the praetor could step into prevent the patron from also seizing their estate.

The age limitations of the Lex Aelia Sentia did not apply to informal manumissions, which could be carried out at the master's discretion at any time. If either owner or slave was underage, age might become decisive in taking the path of informal or formal manumission.

The lex Junia Norbana, of somewhat uncertain date but most often thought to have been passed under Augustus, clarified that informally manumitted persons held limited Latin rights (Latinitas). Junian Latins had the privileges possibly of conubium (legal marriage) and more certainly of commercium, the right to engage in business on the same terms as a Roman citizen. Though the lex Iunia clarified their status as free, they still lacked the right to make a will and pass on their property, and if Junian Latins died, any property they had accumulated reverted to the former master. Informal manumission thus in some sense was an extension of the "free administration" (administratio libera) that permitted a slave to exercise agency in conducting business; Junians lived and worked as free people, but the patron was still entitled to their estate if they died. Thus Junian manumission was a kind of investment in the slave's future earnings, and it may be that operae (services, tasks, projects) could not be attached as a condition.

Two forms of partial manumission recognized in Classical Roman law were by means of a letter (per epistulam) or a declaration in the presence of friends (inter amicos). More casually and even more nebulously, the slave might be given liberty in the presence of witnesses to join other free people socially, especially through an invitation to take part in a dinner (per mensam, to recline at table, or in convivio, at a dinner party) with a declaration of intent. In late antiquity, the master could also destroy the papers documenting his ownership of the slave or hand them over to the slave in the presence of five witnesses.

The master who had freed the slave informally could also offer a second manumission (iteratio) later, this time a formal one. In late antiquity, the emperor Justinian further codified informal means of manumission.

Manumissio per epistulam

Manumission per epistulam (also per epistolam, by means of a letter) enabled a living master to free a slave who was not present—who, for example, was away on business—by stating his intention in a letter. In the Justinian reforms, per epistulam became a legitimate form of manumission on a par with vindicta if the letter was also signed by five witnesses, which made it in form something like a codicil. The slave was freed only upon receipt of the letter.

Manumissio inter amicos

Manumission inter amicos, "among friends," was a formless releasing of the slave by means of a declaration before witnesses. Buckland describes it as “not very precise.” In a rare recorded example from Roman Egypt, the witnesses did not sign the documentation and were not named. The woman being freed set up a payment plan, and the master was entitled to keep her until she had paid while agreeing not to treat her as a slave. The Justinian reforms legitimated manumission inter amicos if the master “formally recorded” his intention in writing. The slave had to obtain the signatures of five witnesses and a publica persona such as a tabellio (notary).

Manumission inter vivos

See also: Employment bond

Grave altar (AD 140–170) for the freedman Lucius Caltilius Diadumenus, praised as optimus ("the best") by his former owner who dedicated it to him

Inter vivos ("among the living") describes a circumstance under which manumission occurred rather than a procedural form—it was any form of manumission that took place while the master was still alive, either by law as manumissio vindicta or by one of the less formal declarations. A manumission agreement by which a slave negotiated to buy his freedom from his master was made inter vivos. There was no cap on the number of slaves a living master could free by either formal or informal means; the limits set by the lex Aelia Sentia applied only to testamentary manumission as would affect the value of the estate left to the heirs.

A common scholarly opinion has been that unless otherwise stipulated, the slave manumitted inter vivos could expect to receive the full peculium, the fund or property that the master had turned over to the slave to manage, but more concerted assemblage of the evidence has suggested that the price of manumission was deducted from the peculium. Disputes arose because there was no legal formula for the transfer of the peculium, and the frequency of dispute may be what led to law on enforcing manumission agreements. Manumission inter vivos suggests contractual negotiations—an "upwardly mobile" slave could bargain for his manumission and for how much of his peculium he would retain, less the agreed-upon self-purchase price. Manumission from a living master, as distinguished from that obtained through a master's will, might have been granted for other reasons but seems mainly to depend on the slave's ability to pay.

Manumission with adoption

See also: Adoption in ancient Rome

A slave might be simultaneously manumitted and adopted by the master. In the early Republic, a freedman through adoption gained the same status as the freeborn citizen who freed him. By the late Republic, as the nature of Roman citizenship was changing, this was no longer true; the freedman who had been adopted was still a freedman. He enjoyed the rights a son held within the family and in private law, but even if he had been adopted into a senatorial family, he could not, for example, marry a woman of senatorial rank.

Augustan financial penalties against childlessness encouraged adoption. Attested among the Justinian reforms, manumission apud acta involved the master recording the slave as a son, with an official witness. EXCEPT WASN'T JUNIAN LATINITY ABOLISHED BY JUSTINIAN???? The new freedman then received the status of Latin rights.

The adopter would exercise more power (potestas) over the freedman as his son than he would within the usual patron-client relationship. Someone other than the former master could adopt a freedman, and while this was frowned upon, it was permitted especially if the adopter was the biological (naturalis) father. Once the freedman took on the status of son, his property was owned by the adopter, though he was in line to inherit.

Third-party manumission

Third-party manumission might be preferred when it improved the freed status of the slave. A manumittee gained the status of the manumitter; if the owner held only Latin rights or was a resident non-citizen (peregrinus), the slave could become a Roman citizen with full rights if sold to and formally manumitted by a third party who was a citizen. In these arrangements, a manumission date was typically set as part of the sales contract.

Gravestone (1st century AD) for the freedman Gaius Caesius Faustus, who built the tomb for himself and four others: his natural son, Gaius Cesius Nothus; Gaius Caesius, the son of his former master; Valeria Galla, possibly his concubine, and the freedwoman of a Lucius Valerius; and Lucius Cornelius Eleutherus (Santa Giulia Museum)

Slaves could also obtain their freedom by paying for someone else to buy them from their master and then manumit them. A constitutio under Marcus Aurelius made the slave's buying back of himself with his own money (redemptio servi suis nummis) legally binding; if the purchaser tried to renege, the slave could take them to a court under a prefect's or provincial governor's jurisdiction. The transaction hinges on the slave having his "own" money and compelling the duty to manumit—neither of which was considered a right of slaves under Roman law, in an indication of how in practice a well-positioned slave had more agency and ability to negotiate than theoretical non-personhood under law accounts for. In the redemptio servi suis nummis procedure, the purchaser became the freedman's patronus but could neither demand services (operae) nor claim a share of the freedman's estate.

As an example of this kind of transaction, the jurist Papinian cites a slave who is the biological child (filius naturalis) of a seller and his female slave. Similar cases involve the redemptio of a child or sibling by blood, even when the slave was under the legal age for manumission. If the purchaser did not meet his obligation to manumit, the seller could assert affectus—a bond of affection—and take the purchaser to court.

The legal question raised is what advantage was gained in having a biological child manumitted through redemptio by a third party rather than by the father himself. The third-party manumitter became the patron under this procedure but had no claim on the freedperson's property, so it seems to have been a way to ensure that the manumittee did not fall under the control of the legitimate heirs of the natural father's estate (for example, half-siblings whose mother was the seller's wife by law), either by coming into their possession or as their subordinate in patronage as he or she would through testamentary manumission. If the slave-holding natural father held only Latin rights or was not a Roman citizen, a third party who was a citizen could confer full citizen rights on the manumittee.

Restrictions on and grounds for manumission

The lex Manlia de vicesima manumissionum of 357 BC was an early brake on the number of formal manumissions, levying a tax equal to 5 percent of the slave’s estimated value, suggesting that even in the early Republic, manumission was common enough that the state sought to regulate and extract revenue from it.

The longstanding prohibition against reenslavement might also make a master reluctant to manumit a slave, fearing financial loss if the freedperson failed to live up to the terms of their release. A mentally ill person (furiosus) was not legally competent to free a slave.

In addition to the lex Fufia Canina regulating the number of slaves that could be released from the estate by a will, the lex Aelia Sentia (AD 4) established age thresholds for manumission. The slave’s master had to be at least twenty years old, and the slave at least thirty. Manumissions could occur contrary to these age limits for a valid reason (iusta causa), as determined by a council. In the city of Rome, this was a ten-member council comprising an equal number of senators and equestrians, or in the provinces, twenty Roman citizens who served as recuperatores (local justices). These councils met on certain fixed days in Rome and on the last day of provincial assizes.

The "just causes" that the jurist Gaius lists include a close blood tie between the would-be manumitter and the manumittee, such as a parent-child or sibling relationship. Other exceptions to the age requirements permitted a grant of liberty to an alumnus (foster child) of the household or to the master's teacher (paedagogus). Ulpian mentions further exceptions such as the master’s capsarius (bag carrier and schoolmate), tutor (educator), wet nurse (nutrix), or collacteus (or collactaneus, "milk brother," one who had shared the same wet nurse). All these exceptions to age requirements are based on an assumption that genuine affection (affectus) for the slave in these roles was natural; however, a slave kept for sexual companionship was considered luxuria, an extravagant or excessive luxury not eligible for specially privileged manumission. A more utilitarian exception was the manumission of a slave who was to become an asset manager (procurator) for the underage owner.

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill argued that one effect if not the aim of Augustan moral legislation pertaining to families and inheritance was not so much to limit the number of manumissions but to impede social advancement by freedmen. As a former slave, the freedman was regarded in Roman law as having no genealogy in the ascending or collateral lines; he was the beginning of his own family line. The patron was thus entitled to claim a share of the freedman's estate—half if the freedman had one heir, a third if he had two—unless the freedman had three or more surviving children as heirs. But if a freedman worth a comfortable 100,000 HS had to divide his property equally, as required by law, among three or more children, the heirs would not qualify for as high a ranking as the father had held on the Roman census, which was based on wealth. They therefore faced a greater barrier to entry into the equestrian order.

The biographer Suetonius saw the purpose of Augustan legislation on slavery in terms of saving the populus Romanus from the "blood contamination" of former slaves who were foreigners (peregrini), and some modern scholars have accepted this view. On the other hand, while the Lex Papia Poppaea of AD 9 prohibited marriage between libertini and those of the senatorial order, its major purpose of imposing a duty to marry applied to freedpersons as well as the freeborn, and other legislation encouraged freedpersons to have children. The anniculi probatio rewarded couples who had been informally manumitted with full citizenship if they produced a child, and a freedwoman could be released from her patron's oversight (tutela) after bearing four children. Increasing the population to replenish the urban cohorts following the civil wars of the late Republic may have been one desired outcome of encouraging freedpersons to have children.

Some mistreatment of slaves was redressed through manumission, as with Claudius's decree that sick slaves abandoned by their masters were to be freed upon their recovery. Attempts to ban the creation of eunuchs for the luxury slave market began under Sulla and were reiterated under several emperors, and if despite heavy penalties castrations occurred, by the time of Justinian the castrated slave was to be freed.

Manumission and the master's debt

Slaves who had been pledged as surety for the master's debt could not be manumitted until the debt was paid. If an insolvent debtor tried to escape his creditors by manumitting his slaves so they couldn’t be seized to pay off his debt, the creditors could sue to have the manumission annulled on grounds of fraud.

One of the "just causes" for manumitting a slave under the legal age of thirty was to allow him to inherit an insolvent estate and take on its liabilities. The term for a slave so designated was heres necessarius, "mandatory heir," as he was not allowed by law to reject the inheritance. His position differed from that of a heres suus et necessarius, who was an unemancipated son or daughter or the deceased's widow, in that heredes sui et necessarii had a praetorian-granted right not to accept an insolvent inheritance. A slave freed under these terms had to pay the debts of the estate by selling off assets, and he was the one subjected to the "ignominy of insolvency" rather than his deceased master. However, he still benefitted from the simultaneous grant of freedom that prevented him from being sold as an asset, and acquisitions arising from his management of the assets after he had taken possession of them could be excluded from seizure.

Manumission and marriage

See also: Contubernium and Concubinatus

Funerary urn (1st century AD) of Lucius Mussius Trophimus and Callityche, who was both his freedwoman and his wife (Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna)

Marriage was one of the "just causes" under the lex Aelia Sentia for which a slave could be manumitted under the age of thirty. A master could manumit an under-thirty ancilla (handmaiden), whether she was a virgin (virgo) or a sexually mature woman (mulier), if he swore an oath to marry her within six months. A patron could not force a freedwoman to marry him, but if marriage had been a condition for manumitting her under age thirty, she was only conditionally freed until it took place. The six-month window was imposed by a decree of the senate after the original legislation, suggesting a "patch" for unforeseen consequences, and if the master/patron failed to follow through, she was no longer obligated to marry him but may have reverted to a condition of slavery. It has sometimes been thought that the age exemption "for the sake of marriage" (matrimonii causa) gave young women an advantage in gaining early manumission.

The testamentary manumission of a slave might include transferring the ownership of a contubernalis, an extralegal marriage partner, and their children, whom the freedperson might in turn free. Legally, the manumitter's relationship to them was that of patron. Epitaphs indicate that a person might be both a patron and a spouse, indicating that once the couple both had free status they went on to marry.

A woman could free her male slave matrimonii causa, but the propriety was debated. Such a manumission seems mainly to have occurred when a patron bequeathed a freedwoman's contubernalis to her so that they could marry. Buckland thought that a woman in fact could not free a slave matrimonii causa except for the freedwoman bequeathed her former collibertus. If she was the one to manumit him rather than the owner, he would share her freed status rather than taking on the patron's.

A eunuch (spado) could also manumit matrimonii causa, presumably for the sake of conforming to the marriage laws, since people identified at birth as having at least some male characteristics held male privileges and responsibilities such as acting as a paterfamilias and were subject to male-gendered laws.

In late antiquity, a constitutio of Justinian granted freed status under certain circumstances to an ancilla who had served as a concubine and had not been provided for in her master's will. The Romans had a form of monogamous concubinage (concubinatus) that gave the female partner rights "almost like those of a wife," but this quasi-marital union as acknowledged in law was primarily for freedwomen or lower-class women of free birth. Justinian's constitutio provided for the manumission of an ancilla who had been acting as a longtime concubine for a deceased master with no other legal wife, as long as his will showed no contrary intent. In addition, any children they had became ingenui, as if they were freeborn, and both the concubine and the children kept the entirety of their peculia and were not subject to patronage under the heirs of the estate.

Manumission for the purpose of religious service

A slave might be manumitted in order to ensure the continuity of religious rites (sacra). Manumissio sacrorum causa is known only from two mentions by the grammarian Festus. As Festus describes it, the manumission itself seems to have been conducted as a form of manumissio vindicta. The master takes the slave by the arm, turns him around (the act of vertigo), and releases him, accompanied by a solemn declaration.

Mommsen regarded this action as a transfer of the slave to service in a temple, similar to the Greek practice, well attested in inscriptions, of releasing slaves from private ownership into the service of a deity. This act rendered them sacred and not subject to secular control, and eventually became a form of de facto manumission. Temple slaves in Rome were servi publici, not beholden to any individual master but not legally freedmen.

Abandonment

A master who intentionally abandoned his slaves gave up all rights of dominium over them as well as subsequent claims, including patronage. Abandonment (derelictio) was not manumission and not a legal procedure as such, and the slave did not acquire free status. A slave judged to have been abandoned became res nullius, a category of property that was not owned but could be acquired through usucapio, possession rather than purchase. For instance, an insolvent master might abandon a slave who had been pledged to secure a debt in lieu of paying back the money; the creditor could then assume possession of the slave, or the slave could be sold off by the state. If a slave conducting business ran afoul of the law, his master could be held responsible in court; if he did not wish to defend the slave, he could abandon him and avoid paying damages or other legal consequences.

An edict of the emperor Claudius in AD 46 created an exception to the res nullius status of abandoned slaves. The edict came in response to masters who sought to avoid their obligation to care for infirm slaves by abandoning them – exposing them without provision for care. Claudius granted automatic libertas to slaves with a grave illness or disability (infirmitas) whose masters abandoned them. This abandonment was seen as common enough to contribute to contagions and homelessness. To prevent owners from euthanizing sick slaves instead, the edict overturned the longstanding precedent that a master could kill a slave at will, making it a crime to kill a slave to avoid providing medical care. The slave freed under this edict became a Junian Latin and could not be reclaimed by the former owner.

The motive for Claudius's edict has often been seen as humanitarian, even by scholars of slavery otherwise reluctant to attribute any benevolence to Roman masters. But there were also social costs to this abandonment, which is specified in the edict as occurring publice, in public or in a manner that affected the public interest. The biographer Suetonius names the Tiber Island in Rome, where a temple of the healing god Aesculapius was located, as the place where slaves were commonly abandoned. This temple had facilities for overnight stays for the purpose of therapeutic sleep (incubatio) and functioned as a sort of hospital with medical personnel on staff. Temple resources may have been strained by masters diverting their labor costs onto this public charity, only to reclaim their property to their own benefit if the slave recovered.

The granting of Junian status was reviewed under Justinian in the 6th century because it had the effect of mitigating the former master's economic loss, as he was entitled to receive the possessions of a Junian Latin upon their death but had received nothing when the abandoned slave became res nullius formerly. Justinian therefore upgraded the status of slaves freed because they had been abandoned for infirmitas so that they became full citizens.

Deathbed manumission

Deathbed manumission seems to be the rare case of a master freeing a slave out of impulsive affection and to no legal or profitable advantage – though to no loss, either. The poet Martial writes of manumitting his 19-year-old amanuensis Demetrius, who has fallen ill beyond curing. As death looms, Martial manumits Demetrius so that he can enter the afterlife as a free man (liber), saying that surrendering his rights as master (ius domini) was the only reward he could give at that point but that the gift (munus) Demetrius deserved was to recover fully. Pliny wrote to a friend that he was anguished over an outbreak of illness among his slaves, and had granted humanitarian manumission to those who were dying. Pliny, curiously, frames these manumissions as consolations for himself; he manages his grief at losing them by first setting them free, so that their death no longer seems like a total loss to him. Because these manumissions were necessarily informal, the status briefly enjoyed by the slave would have been Junian Latinity, and therefore the master suffered no loss, as he was still entitled to inherit anything the slave had owned.

A deathbed manumission seems indicated for Manius Egnatius Lucullus, whose epitaph, dated to 5 BC, states that he died on January 4 at the age of 31, on the same day he was manumitted. Informal deathbed or "pathetic" manumissions may also explain why epitaphs identify very young children as liberti, since after the lex Aelia Sentia they would not have been eligible for manumission without a review by a council for just cause. These children are often vernae, children born within the household, or alumni, children brought into the household to be reared as part of the familia. One verna died free at the age of five months, and an alumnus at only three months. It's unclear why a manumission that had no practical effect, especially for a child too young to be aware of its legal status, seemed like a kindness; Martial, however, states directly that deathbed manumission allowed the slave to enter the afterlife as a free person.

Favor libertatis

Roman law recognized that people might be illegally enslaved, and if their freeborn status could be proven, procedures were in place for them to regain it. The voiding of unlawful enslavement was not manumission but a restoration of libertas and their citizenship. But questions also arose about the freed status of those who had been held as slaves in accordance with the law but whose manumission posed thorny legal issues. In such cases, the jurists established that a decision might be rendered favore libertatis, "in favor of liberty."

For instance, a slave might be owned jointly by business partners. If one part-owner left his share as a gift of liberty to the slave in his will, it was "absurd" for the slave to hold only partial ownership of himself. By the time of Justinian, such cases were generally decided favore libertatis: the slave could be freed into the patronage of the living owner by buying out his remaining share.

Several cases involving manumission about which jurists write were decided favore libertatis, especially testamentary manumissions, even when such a decision defied legalistic logic or required an otherwise "unwarranted interpretation" of a will's wording. If a slave was supposed to be freed upon the master's death, but the heirs were disputing other terms of the will or the estate had accumulated debt after the will was drawn up, the master's intention to manumit was favored in arriving at a resolution. Marcus Aurelius in particular tended to favor manumission over the interests of creditors and even the imperial purse (fiscus), and issued a constitutio that if freedom had ever been promised to a slave, it was to be granted.

An individual who lived as a free person in good faith but who had never actually been manumitted might acquire liberty after twenty years, if their status had not been contested in court within that time. The requirement of good faith excluded fugitive slaves.

Marble bust (1st century AD) of the freedwoman Staia Quinta

Examples in juristic texts of appropriate favor libertatis often involve the relative status of mother and child. That the child would be born into the same status as the mother was a long-held principle of the ius gentium, with a very few exceptions. But if a woman's manumission had been arranged before she conceived or during pregnancy and had not taken effect by the time of birth, there was precedent for deciding the status of her child "in favor of liberty." A child born to a conditionally freed woman (statulibera) could be considered free favore libertatis even if something prevented the mother from meeting the condition that would free her before giving birth.

In one case, a woman's contract made her manumission conditional on her first child being a male. After she gave birth to twins, girl and boy, it was simply presumed favore libertatis that the boy was the elder, and since the mother became free upon fulfilling the condition, her daughter was freeborn (ingenua).

The jurist Paulus invokes favor libertatis in the case of an ancilla who had been prostituted contrary to the ne prostituatur clause in her contract that forbade it, ruling that the principle of liberty overrode other contractual considerations. If a woman's sales contract had ever contained such a restriction, it was in effect for the full term of her servitude, and a subsequent buyer, even if unaware of it, had to manumit her, not merely stop prostituting her, as affirmed by Vespasian. A woman freed after being prostituted unlawfully acquired Junian Latin status.

Ingratitude

Punishing a freedperson with a return to slavery reversed the principle of favor libertatis and was a tendency of post-Classical law. In 320, Constantine I, the first emperor to Christianize the Roman state, overturned the longstanding rule that manumission was irrevocable and allowed patrons to withdraw the liberty and citizenship of freedmen found guilty of ingratitude, a charge that could also be brought against an emancipated son and, if successful, returned him to his father's potestas. Previously, the Lex Aelia Sentia of AD 4 had allowed a patron to take his freedman to court for not carrying out his operae as outlined in their manumission agreement, but the possible penalties ranged in severity from a reprimand and fines to condemnation to hard labor and had not permitted a return to slavery.

Manumission within the Church

By the early 4th century AD, when the empire was becoming Christianized, slaves could be freed by a ritual in a church, officiated by an ordained bishop or priest. Constantine I promulgated edicts authorizing manumissio in ecclesia, manumission in church, in the years 316 and 323, though the law was not put into effect in Africa till AD 401. Churches were allowed to manumit slaves among their membership, and clergy could free their own slaves by simple declaration without filing documents or the presence of witnesses.

In one example of a possible manumissio in ecclesia, a mid-4th century document from the archaeological site of Kellis, Roman Egypt, records a master named Aurelius Valerius stating that he manumitted a female slave "because of my exceptional Christianity, under Zeus, Earth and Sun," in the presence of "the most reverend father Psekes." "Under Zeus, Earth and Sun" was a Greek legal formula (ὑ̣π̣ὸ Δία Γῆν Ἥλιον) used in manumissions and found in at least one other manumission document that makes explicit reference to Christianity. The house in which the document was discovered also produced Manichaean texts and portions of two Pauline epistles, to the Romans and to the Hebrews.

The Christian emperors Leo and Anthemius (mid-5th century) encouraged early monasticism by allowing a slave to become a monk and to live as free, but since this required his master's permission and he reverted to slavery if he left the monastery, the freedom so acquired seems circumscribed. A Novella of Justinian, however, expanded this privilege so that the slave did not require his master's consent, and after he had been a novice for three years, he was irrevocably a free man unless he departed from monastic life. Within the three-year period, the master could seek to reassert his dominium by proving that the slave was motivated by avoiding consequences for crime or misconduct. Laws such as the Novella 142 of Justinian in the 6th century gave bishops the power to free slaves. By the 530s, the Justinian reforms had dismantled Julio-Claudian manumission legislation, abolishing the status of dediticius, eliminating age requirements and limits on testamentary manumssion, and abrogating the Senatus Consultum Claudianum.

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Category:Slavery in ancient Rome Category:Roman law