Invisible Romans by Robert C. Knapp

Author:Robert C. Knapp [Knapp, Robert C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
Published: 2010-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Freeborn: C. Cornelius Cai filius Lupulus = Gaius Cornelius Lupulus, son of Gaius.

Freedman: C. Cornelius Cai libertus Lupulus = Gaius Cornelius Lupulus, freedman of Gaius.

Gaius Lupulus the freedman could have easily omitted ‘freedman of Gaius’; there was no need to put it there, just as there was no ‘requirement’ that a filiation (‘son of Gaius’) be added. The important thing to emphasize is that a person who had won his freedom was very much aware of the feat and voluntarily wished to display the fact on his gravestone. He was proud of winning his freedom and dying a free man. But at the same time, to all appearances, other ordinary folks did not particularly care on a daily basis whether a person was a freedman or not.

How many freedmen were there? I have noted that the status is intrinsically limited because it can apply only to slaves freed by Roman citizens. These citizens accounted for just 10 to 15 percent of the total population in the empire before universal citizenship in ad 212. Their freedmen numbered perhaps half a million. Remember that freed status disappeared after the first generation; at any given time among a numerous citizen population such as in Italy or a Roman citizen colony, perhaps only one in twenty was a freedman or freedwoman; in areas with few Roman citizens, a person would probably have to meet well over a hundred people to find himself dealing with a single citizen freedperson. These numbers are of necessity very gross estimates, as demographic information is lacking. But they do give some indication of the scale of the situation. And that scale is very small indeed, especially as compared with slaves, who constituted perhaps 9 million (15 percent) of the total population, varying, of course, by time and place. There is no question of a freedman population overwhelming a free population, or even of being numerically very visible. This conclusion stands directly against the impression of ‘Orontes flowing into Tiber’ of the elite sources and the supposed evidence of the names of freedmen that I have critiqued above.

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