by Jerry Toner
The details stipulated in the Delphi manumission contracts show that even when such freedom was attained it was often put off for years and was conditional upon continued good service. The various duties which the freedman was often expected to continue to carry out for his former master also show that the divide between slavery and freedom was not, in practice, as clear-cut as we might imagine. That said, it is obvious that many slaves longed to be free and were prepared to go to great lengths to achieve it.
Slavery was a way for Roman society to assimilate large numbers of outsiders into its structure. But the Romans did try to erect some kind of quality control to prevent undesirables from becoming citizens. The Lex Aelia Sentia, for example, prevented any slaves from being freed who had been put in chains as a punishment by their masters or had been branded, or interrogated under torture about a crime they had committed, or had been sentenced to fight as gladiators or against wild beasts. Instead, if their owner manumitted them, they became free men of the same status as subject foreigners. The Lex Fufia Caninia of 2 BC set additional restrictions on the percentage of his slaves that a master could manumit (see Gaius Institutes 1, 1; 8–55; Suetonius Augustus 40).
Cicero’s comment that the first six years of Julius Caesar’s dictatorship was equivalent to a full term of slavery can be found at Philippic 8.11.32. One of Augustus’s most severe punishments was to forbid slaves from being freed for thirty years (Suetonius Augustus 21). Digest 38.1 deals with the laws regarding the work obligations of freedmen to their patrons. Claudius bans owners from abandoning sick or old slaves on the Tiber island in Suetonius Claudius 25. On masters freeing their slaves so that they would receive the state corn dole, see the Theodosian Code 14.17.6 and Suetonius Augustus 42. For the gift of a farm to the old nurse, see Pliny the Younger Letters 6.3. The inscription ILS 8365 is an example of a tomb being open to the wider members of the household, including slaves and freedmen. The tale of Gaius Melissus is at Suetonius Grammarians 5.
CHAPTER X
THE PROBLEM WITH FREEDMEN
AMBITION IS THE INTELLECTUAL equivalent of body odour. This is the problem with freedmen – they reek of it. Once they have formally been welcomed as Roman citizens, they feel a desperate urge to climb socially. It is not wholly surprising if freedmen who were branded or tattooed as slaves should try to conceal these physical reminders of their servitude by visiting doctors who specialise in concealing the marks by digging them out and burning the flesh so it scars over. But most freedmen go much further. They strive hard for success, far harder, it has to be admitted, than most of the freeborn would care to. It is a blessing that they are prohibited from holding office, for otherwise they would all be frantically clambering up the greasy pole of the political career. So instead, they are forced to fulfil their desire for personal achievement by means of getting rich. But even this they can achieve only in a vulgar manner. For instead of drawing an income from the long-term custody and management of landholdings, they often try to make their wealth by trade. As a result, they are proverbially rich.
Freeing slaves is always an indulgence. The master, looking back fondly to the many years of honest service which a particular slave has given, will soften and seek to feel that warm glow of approbation which the act of manumission engenders. Like him, we might think that our freedmen would be overcome with gratitude towards us; that they would be keen to reimburse us for our generosity and kindliness; or that there would be nothing they would not do to help us in some small way. We might care to imagine that the slave, once freed, will gladly act with due respect to his master’s superior social position. We would be sadly wrong. For freedmen often do not act as obsequiously as they should. Instead they often have many upstart ideas well above their station, however much it has been improved.
As an example, I give you my freedman Servius. I rewarded him, an educated man, with his freedom and, as is usual practice, he took my name: Marcus Sidonius Servius. Yet no sooner had he been freed from his bonds than he felt able to behave towards me as if he were some kind of equal. He addressed me with familiarity and rarely bothered to turn up to pay his respects in the morning. On one occasion, he even took to interrupting me as I was explaining to him what I wanted him to do with his business venture, for which I was providing financial backing. My temper snapped. I administered a light beating of a few slaps and told him in no uncertain terms what I thought of his behaviour. You will not believe what happened next. He took me to court. The cheek of it! He argued that I had dishonoured him as a free man by treating him in this way. Naturally the judge, who is a man whom I have for many years known to possess sound judgement, did not see the matter in the same way. He dismissed the case, saying that it was absurd for a piece of former property to claim dishonour from his former owner. As a former slave, he could never have any honour in the eyes of his former master, so it was impossible to dishonour him.
Sadly, not all freedmen are grateful to you, nor do they all carry out their duties as they should. On several occasions I myself have been forced to go to court to complain about certain of my freedmen. The courts, rightly, condemn such behaviour by freedmen: former slaves cannot be allowed to get away with it. If they behave insolently or abusively, they are generally punished, perhaps even with a period of exile. Or if they have attacked their patron, they will be condemned to hard labour in the mines. The same punishment will happen if they are found guilty of having spread malicious rumours about their patron or incited someone to bring an accusation against him. If they have merely failed to carry out their work duties for their former master, they will usually receive a telling-off only, but be warned that they will be severely punished if they give cause for complaint again. The emperor Claudius went so far as to sell back into slavery any freedman who failed to show due gratitude to their patrons or about whom their former owners had cause for complaint.
The burning ambition that drives these freedmen and their families has seen some rise in society to an almost phenomenal extent. It does seem scandalous that an ex-slave can, through work or inheritance of their former master’s estate, equal the wealth of the most established landowning families. I have the dubious pleasure of having one of them as a neighbour in Campania, where the fellow has bought a typically ostentatious and overpriced estate. His name is Trimalchio and he invited me over to dinner soon after arriving and, not wishing to seem aloof, I accepted. He spent the entire evening going on and on about how he had earnt it all by his own hard work. ‘I’ve got drive,’ he said. ‘I buy low and I know when to sell high, and I am extremely mean and thrifty.’
He had come as a slave to Rome from Asia as a boy and was used by his master as his favourite for fourteen years. Eventually he managed the whole household and was named as heir by his master, from whom he inherited in due course. As he said, ‘no one is satisfied with doing nothing’, so he decided to go into business. He built five ships and filled them with wine, but they all sank on the way to Rome. He claims to have lost 30 million sesterces but that kind of gross exaggeration is typical of his sort. So he built bigger and better ships and loaded them with wine, bacon, beans, perfumes and slaves. On one voyage he says he made a profit of 10 million sesterces – believe him if you will – and then acquired himself a huge house, many slaves and an estate.
It does seem outrageous that these nouveau riche are so visibly successful. You would think that they would just be glad to be free and be quietly grateful to the citizen body that has accepted them into its heart. As it is, the Roman people have become a melting pot for all kinds of immigrants and ex-slaves. Sometimes even the vast difference in status between the free and slaves is ignored. Since the emperor Augustus reformed the Order of the Knights to admit those worth over 400,000 sesterces, it has become jammed full of wealthy freedmen. Boundaries are becoming so blurred that freedmen are even managing to get themselves elected to high office. Barbarius Philippus, for example, was a runaway slave but was illegally elected as praetor at Rome. It makes one wonder
whether all his decrees should be wiped off the statutes or whether they should remain for the sake of stability.
Certainly when freedmen and slaves are discovered trying to lie and cheat their way into public office, then they should be punished vigorously. One slave called Maximus was about to enter the office of quaestor when his owner recognised him and dragged him away. He was actually granted immunity because he had dared to stand for public office, but another runaway who was found to have become one of the praetors already was thrown from the Tarpeian Rock on the Capitol. Now-adays, things are in such chaos and confusion and the fine traditions of the Roman state are so widely ignored that, as far as I can see, slaves buy their freedom and become Romans with money they have got through robbery, prostitution and other nefarious activities.
I know that some local communities take great exception when a wealthy former slave starts upsetting the apple cart. I remember that this happened near my estate in Africa, when a newly freed slave called Chresimus started getting much bigger harvests from his small farm than did his neighbours with far larger holdings. He became extremely unpopular and people accused him of stealing their crops through sorcery. During his trial he brought all his farm equipment into the forum along with his slaves. His tools were well fashioned and kept, while his slaves were all healthy, well dressed and well looked after. ‘Here is my magic,’ he shouted. ‘But the invisible ingredient is my work and the sweat I’ve poured early in the morning till late at night.’ They acquitted him unanimously.
To be fair, there are many freedmen and their sons who have made a huge commercial success out of farming. Acilius Sthenelus, who was the son of a freedman, won great honour by cultivating no more than sixty acres of vines in the territory of Nomentum and selling it for 400,000 sesterces. Sthenelus also aided his friend Remmius Palaemon, who within the past two decades bought for 600,000 sesterces a country estate in the same territory of Nomentum, about ten miles outside Rome. As you may know, the price of all suburban property is notoriously low, particularly in this region, but he even bought the cheapest farms, which had been ruined by neglect and whose soil was poor even by the worst standards. Under Sthenelus’s careful management the vineyards were replanted, the soil improved and farm buildings rebuilt. The result was extraordinary: within eight years the unharvested vintage was auctioned to a buyer for 400,000 sesterces. In the end the great philosopher and politician Seneca bought the vineyards for four times the original price, after just ten years of careful cultivation.
And we must also accept that not all freedmen are vulgar. Some have brains of the highest order and have contributed greatly to scholastic studies. This is not simply from being used by their literary-minded masters as readers or secretaries. Marcus Antonius Gnipho, for example, was born in Gaul of free birth, but was abandoned by his parents and raised as a slave. The man who reared him first educated him and then freed him. He is said to have been extremely talented, with an unparalleled memory, learned in both Greek and Latin, and had a pleasant and easy-going manner. He never asked to be paid for his teaching but, instead, relied on the generosity of his pupils. He even taught in the household where Julius Caesar grew up. Or there was Staberius Eros, probably a Thracian, who was bought at a public auction but later freed because of his love of literature. He loved the republic. He taught Caesar’s assassins, Brutus and Cassius. And he was endowed with such a noble character that, during Sulla’s dictatorship, he taught the children of those who had fallen foul of the tyrant for free. And then there was Lenaeus, who was the freedman of Pompey the Great and went with him everywhere, even on most of his expeditions. The story goes that when he was still a slave he escaped from his chains and fled back to his own country, where he taught literature. He then sent his master the same amount of money that he had paid for him, but his master set him free for nothing since he had such an excellent character and was such a fine scholar.
The freedmen of the divine emperor’s household are also, naturally, to be excepted from the characterisation of former slaves as vulgar parvenus. Their proximity to the father of the state gives them a special position in society. As slaves, they are paid by the emperor, and they often amass great fortunes and become slave owners themselves. Musicus Scurranus, for example, was an imperial slave of Tiberius who owned sixteen slaves himself. They performed a variety of services for him, and ranged from an accountant to a cook to a valet. Indeed, the uniqueness of such imperial freedmen was legally recognised under the emperor Claudius, who allowed them to marry citizens, and gave their children the status of Latins. Normal slaves, of course, would have been seriously punished if they had lived with a Roman citizen, and any children they produced would have been classed as slaves. And there are a great many of these imperial freedmen, who carry out a whole host of duties within the great imperial household. I even met one who had been the special keeper of the robes worn by the emperor at triumphs.
Some of these freedmen are so close to the emperor that they become their special confidants. Claudius, it is well known, looked to his freedmen for all kinds of advice, even in matters of public importance. He argued that since they could not stand for office themselves or be actively involved in political life, these freedmen could be relied upon to be entirely objective. There were even some freeborn citizens who voluntarily became slaves of the emperor to join his household and help him administer the empire. I know many of the older families were outraged that the jobs which had traditionally been carried out by senators were now being given to slaves. And it has to be said that some of them acted disgracefully. One of Claudius’s freedmen, Pallas, was awarded 15 million sesterces and an honorary praetorship by the senate just for suggesting the legislation concerning imperial slaves being allowed to marry Roman women. In a carefully choreographed act of false modesty he turned the money down but took the honour, claiming that he would make do with his modest income. So the senate found itself in the absurd position of having to put up a public inscription praising the old-fashioned frugality of an ex-slave who was now worth some 300 million sesterces. At the same time, Pallas’s brother, who was called Felix, did not show any such self-restraint. He had been appointed as governor of Judaea by Claudius and, believing himself safe because of his close relationship with the emperor, carried out all manner of crimes and confiscations in the province with impunity.
These imperial slaves and freedmen are a law unto themselves. They stand apart from the rest of society and this is seen most clearly in the close connections that they form with one another. I have seen several elaborate tombstones set up by one of them for a colleague who worked in the same part of the imperial administration. I have even seen tombs where they have chosen to lie together for eternity in death, so close was their relationship in life.
But these few exceptions aside, most freedmen cannot help but turn to ostentatious display to try to show that they are, in some sense, true Romans. You see it everywhere in their tombs. They seem to see this as their claim to some part of the eternal city and its citizen body. This is understandable enough but their tombs are always so grand and overly ornate and covered with self-aggrandising claims about the often very modest achievements of their occupants. Freedmen frequently assail you with details of how rich they are, failing to understand that true wealth does not need to advertise itself, for it speaks in the restrained manners and character of the gentleman. That neighbour of mine, Trimalchio, whom I mentioned before, bombarded me with details about how much wheat his estates produced and how many oxen had been broken that morning. He even had an accountant slave come in and recite details of what had been going on that day, announcing that thirty slaves boys had been born to Trimalchio’s slave women, that a slave called Mithridates had been punished for cursing the master’s name, that 10 million sesterces had been deposited in the strongboxes, and that there had been a fire in the gardens in Pompeii. Trimalchio broke in here:
‘What was that,’ he said, ‘when did I buy gardens in Pompeii?’
> ‘Last year,’ the accountant replied, ‘but they have yet to appear in the accounts.’
Trimalchio grew red with anger and proclaimed grandly:
‘I forbid any estates that have been bought for me to be entered in my accounts if I have not been told about it within six months.’
All of this was the most embarrassing attempt to impress me and, naturally, I did not believe a word of any of it.
This all happened before the meal really got going. As we reclined for dinner, Egyptian slave boys ran up to us and poured water cooled with snow upon our hands, while others, who followed them in, clipped our toenails through the ends of our sandals with amazing dexterity. And while they were doing all these tasks, the boys sang aloud in harmony. The whole household seemed to be singing. Even when I ordered a drink from a boy nearby, he sang my order back to me in full cry. You would have imagined that you had not gone to dinner but to a concert in a theatre. Then the food started. A huge tray was brought in. On the tray stood a bronze donkey, on which hung two baskets carrying black and white olives respectively. Two platters contained an assortment of delicacies, including dormice sprinkled with poppy-seed and honey, and hot sausages on a silver gridiron, underneath which were damson plums and pomegranate seeds. The tray was engraved with Trimalchio’s name and the weight of silver it contained.