Invisible Romans (30 page)

It is worth noting that these slaves and freedmen were not from the same owner and so had formed relationships outside their respective households.

The two most significant social accomplishments of freedmen were freedom itself and family. Although fictional, and buried in a narrative of an outrageously excessive freedmen’s dinner, Petronius’ Hermeros offers a defense of the dignity and pride in winning his freedom in his speech to Encolpius:

We only seem ridiculous to
you.
Behold your school master, an older man: We are pleasing to
him.
You are a child fresh off your mother’s breast, hardly able to utter ‘mu’ or ‘ma,’ a clay vessel, a soaking leather strap, softer, not better. You think you are better off? Then eat two breakfasts, dine twice a day. I prefer my good name to gold.
And
I might add, who has ever had to ask anything of me more than once? I was in bondage for forty years. Through it all, no one knew whether I was slave or free. I was a boy with long hair when I came to this town – they hadn’t even built the town hall yet. But I really worked to keep my master satisfied – a much-respected man and full of dignity, whose little finger was worth more than our whole being. There were, of course, those in the house who now and again tried to trip me up. Nevertheless – thanks be to the master! – I won through.
These
are the real accomplishments, for being born free makes life as easy as snapping your finger. (
Satyricon
57)

Probably the first deed on the part of a newly freed slave was to try to free in turn the woman he had been living with in slavery and any children they might have had; as Hermeros states, ‘I bought out of slavery my slave wife, so that no one could wipe his hands on her bosom.’ Of course, not all freedmen would have had such a relationship in slavery, but if it did exist, freeing wife and offspring must have been of paramount importance. Otherwise, a freedman might marry after gaining his or her freedom. There were some disabilities for the
wealthiest freedmen, especially relating to the prohibition against marrying into the senatorial class, but ordinary freedmen had the right to marry whom they pleased; if they had children, these possessed the same testamentary rights as freeborn. And there could still be some children for a freedman’s family even if, as is likely, freedom came for a man about age thirty and for a woman even somewhat later in life. In either case – children freed from slavery or children had later in life – a freedman’s family was far less taken for granted than a freeborn person’s might have been. The clearest evidence of families’ importance comes from freedmen’s gravestone inscriptions and, especially, relief sculptures. On these reliefs are found not the mythological themes and heroized portraiture familiar from grave reliefs of the elite. Rather we have ordinary people staring out from the grave, proudly dressed in the citizen garb of the toga and stola and often with a child between or beside the parents.

Dear bonds between freedman husband and wife are illustrated by the famous gravestone of Aurelius Hermia and his wife, Aurelia Philematio, quoted also in
Chapter 4
:

I am Lucius Aurelius Hermia, freedman of Lucius, a butcher working on the Vinimal Hill. This woman, Aurelia Philematio, freedwoman of Lucius, who went before me in death, my one and only wife, chaste of body, faithfully loving a faithful husband, lived equal in devotion with no selfishness taking her from her duty.
[Image of Philematio looking lovingly at Hermia.]
This is Aurelia Philematio, freedwoman of Lucius. I alive was called Aurelia Philematio, chaste, modest, ignorant of the foul ways of the crowd, faithful to my husband. He was my fellow freedman, the same now torn from me – alas! He was in truth and indeed like and more than a father to me. He took me on his lap a mere seven years old – now after forty years I am dead. He flourished in all his doings among men on account of my faithful and firm devotion. (
CIL
6.9499 =
ILS
7472, Rome)

Many other inscriptions, while brief, express a respect for a lost spouse:

For the Spirits of Gaius Octavius Trypho, freedman of Marcella.

Aelia Musa set up this monument to her well-deserving husband. (
CIL
6.23324, Rome)

Another shows the respect a son had for the wish of his parents to be united in death as in life:

Marcus Volcius Euhemerus, freedman of Marcus, requests that after his death his remains along with those of Volcia Chreste, his wife, be placed in a single burial urn. Marcus Volcius Cerdo, Marcus’ son, did as his father asked. (
CIL
6.29460 =
ILS
8466, Rome)

These expressions of love and memory mirror similar declarations of fidelity, loyalty, and so forth commonly found on free persons’ grave markers.

In the
Satyricon
we have an example of a proud father ambitious for his children, much as Horace’s father was for him. Echion, a rag dealer, has two sons. One is of an intellectual bent and he is engaged in preliminary studies of Greek and literature. The other has completed his preliminary studies and now masters a bit of law and is being trained to take over Echion’s business, or to embark on another one such as law, or barbering, or auctioneering. An inscription gives another case of parental devotion. This time, a mother grieves for her daughter:

Posilla Senenia, daughter of Quartus, lies here. Quarta Senenia, freedwoman of Gaius, also. Passerby, stop, read what is written. A mother was not permitted to enjoy her only daughter. Some god – I do not know which one – envied her and made it not to be. Since it was not possible that she while living be dressed by her mother, after death her mother did this properly when her time on earth was up. She has clothed her finely with this tomb, she whom she loved all through her life. (
CIL
9.4933, Monteleone Sabino, Italy)

Parents grieve for their children. Here a parent bemoans the fact that the child will never enjoy the parent’s hard-won freedom:

Sacred to the Spirits. I do not say his name, nor how many years he lived, lest the grief be alive in our hearts when we read this. You were a sweet little baby but death shortly took your life. You never enjoyed freedom. Alas, alas! Is it not grievous that he whom you love perish? Now death everlasting gave the only freedom he will know. (
CIL
8.25006, Carthage)

How many children freedmen had is impossible to say. I might speculate that many children born in slavery were not redeemed, that the freed slaves were too old to have large families. But it is simply impossible to know. Nor can it be known what happened in the next generation, for the marker of freed status, the ‘patronymic’ giving the name of the patron in place of the biological father, disappears, of course, in the nomenclature of the offspring of a freedman. This inscription illustrates how a couple, Atticus and Salviola, identify themselves as having emerged from slavery with the notation ‘freedperson of Eros,’ while they give their son, a child of now-free parents, the traditional filiation of a freeborn person, ‘son of Atticus’:

Gaius Julius Atticus, freedman of Eros, while living set up this monument. Julia Salviola, freedwoman of Eros, deceased, and Gaius Julius Victor, son of Atticus, dead at age 18, lie buried here. (
CIL
13.275, St-Bertrand-de-Comminges, France)

As I have noted before, freedmen found their identity not only in their freedom and families, but in their work. Although there would naturally have been stratification within the category of freedman according to the success of work – the difference between a shopkeeper and a grand international trader – the focus on work and on fellows who made a living working is remarkable; perhaps half of all inscriptions of freedmen mention a craft or profession, a much higher percentage than on the epitaphs of freeborn and remarkably different from the focus of the elite on a life of leisure, avoiding notice of actual work as much as possible and competing for public office and recognition. At the very top of freedmen were the
Augustales,
in origin priests of the imperial cult, but whose office opened the way to active participation in a range of local duties and so to some extent substituted for the municipal offices freedmen were ineligible for. As the equivalent of the local freeborn elite, sharing their ambitions, these men are of no concern
here. I mention them only to indicate that for a small subset of freedmen there was the local recognition that the elite in general craved as part of their
raison d’être.
Almost all freedmen, like almost all freeborn, cared not at all for office-holding and public life beyond neighborhood offices in professional and social clubs and associations, and found their satisfaction in their work, families, and friends.

15. A freedman family. The couple holds hands in the symbol of legitimate marriage; their two children are in the background.

A freedman coming out of slavery most often had a trade or occupation that he had learned or trained in as part of his slave experience. A good example of the process is the slave baker and cook in Apuleius’
Golden Ass
(10.13–16). These brothers had been set up by a wealthy master in an establishment away from the slave household and operated independently. Although we do not know the end of their story, it is likely that they were eventually freed and went on to run food services as freedmen. Such was the normal pattern that found so many freedmen in business of one sort or another. The variety of this work was extensive. Trade and industry were primary foci since these businesses would
be logical ones for masters to put their slaves to work at. Echion’s aspirations for his sons list occupations as barber, auctioneer, lawyer; Horace’s father listed merchant, auctioneer, or trader. The friends of Trimalchio at the dinner have the following occupations: porter, undertaker, petty trader, clothes dealer, huckster (or porter, again), pleader, innkeeper, state performer, stonemason/monument maker, perfume dealer, barber, auctioneer, muleteer, itinerant hawker or performer, cobbler, cook, and baker. Other sources note freedmen who were gladiators, actors, lawyers, doctors, artists, and architects. So they were active in a wide range of occupations. I would suppose that the higher mortality rate of towns and cities, where most freedmen lived, combined with smaller families to start with, probably meant that the constant replenishment of freedmen through manumission did not produce more merchants, artisans, and small-time professionals than the economy could bear.

In their social and economic world beneath that of the elite, freedmen had a rich religious life. Traditionally discussion of this focuses on the
Seviri Augustales,
the six-man board charged with the worship of the emperor mentioned briefly above. But all the others turned their attention to mundane religious activities in their daily lives too. Many, both men and women, were involved in religious associations in common with slaves and free men, especially in households as in this example:

Dedicated to Scribonia Helice, freedwoman, by the worshipers of the Household Gods and Fortune of Lucius Caedius Cordus. (
AE
1992.334, Castelvecchio Subequo, Italy)

While the early Christian communities composed of a cross-section of ordinary people have been seen as, if not unique, at least extraordinary in the Romano-Grecian world, in fact that world was heavily populated with similar associations meeting social needs in various contexts – household, vocational, ethnic, locational, and, especially, religious. Freedmen were full participants. Freedmen even figured in the priesthoods of traditional Roman deities. Contrary to the usual assumption that only one, the Bona Dea, was open to freedmen, epigraphy shows activity and even leadership involving much other cultic activity. Indeed, priests of the Bona Dea do appear:

Maenalus, attendant official, dedicates this to Philematio, freedman of the emperor, priest of the Bona Dea (
CIL
6.2240, Rome)

Gaius Avillius December, contractor of marble, rightly fulfilled his vow to the Bona Dea along with his wife Vellia Cinnamis. Erected when Claudius Philadespotus, imperial freedman, was priest and Quintus Iunius Marullus was consul, the sixth day before the Kalends of November. (
CIL
10.1549, Pozzuoli, Italy)

But priests of other divinities do as well. For example, from Chieti comes a dedication of a freedman priest of Venus:

Gaius Decius Bitus, the freedman of Gaius, priest of Venus, dedicated this to Peticia Polumnia, freedwoman. (
AE
1980.374)