Romans had a practice of granting manumission to some slaves. Those receiving such grants held a separate status from the citizens, i.e. free men. As freedmen they had more limited legal rights and defined obligations to their former masters, now their patrons. That’s pretty basic, but the social function of this group certainly evolved over time and we might think about the attitudes and social conditions that preceded the evolution of the imperial freedmen. I came across two passages today that got me thinking along those lines:
These passages would need to be contextualized by say Sulla’s mass manumission of the so called Cornelii, some 10,000 individuals, or the power he gave to Chrysogonus.
The basic moral seems to be that benefiting too many freedman or one freedman too much is viewed with suspicion. On the other hand our imperial sources may be reading too much of their present social reality back on to their accounts of the Republic.
Contrast how Plutarch does not mention distributions to freedmen, but instead emphasizes that there was so much grain available it was give to foreigners as well — yet another group whose influence was a site of socio-political anxiety in the Late Republic. Cf. the careers of Theophanes of Mitylene and Balbus.
I was getting a little lost in the literary accounts of 56-55 BC. This post is just a little break to try to return to the coins.