Invisible Romans (28 page)

As I have mentioned, the elite cultural, social, and economic paradigm could only be sustained through the employment of capable, trusted slaves in positions of supervision and management. Although free labor was hired when help was needed on a seasonal or specific project, there is little evidence that free persons were hired to do the supervisory work that a slave or freedman could do, and they literally could not be a business representative. A prime example of a reliable freedman is Cicero’s indispensable Tiro, first his slave and then his freedman. Among the local elite, Lichas of Tarentum is a wealthy merchant in Petronius’ novel, who owns ships, has estates, and uses quite a number of slaves to carry out the household’s business transactions; it is these who might expect ultimately to be freed. Legal authorities Ulpian and Gaius make it clear that both male and female slaves could
be used by masters as agents. This would pave the way to freedom with skills learned. And, indeed, some freedmen’s freedom comes after being witnesses or agents in their masters’ poisonings, murders, and crimes. The historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus wrote of freedmen ‘who having been confidants and accomplices of their masters in poisonings, receive from them their freedom as a reward’ (
Antiquities
4.24). This sort of unethical behavior should not surprise, for freedmen served their former masters, and if those were engaged in nefarious activities, it is only natural to suppose that their freedmen would have been as well.

14. Freedom at the death of a master. Frequently a master would reward faithful slaves with their freedom at his death, thereby keeping their service for his lifetime and harming only his heirs, who lost valuable property. In this relief, mourners surround the bier. Note the woman wearing a freedman’s cap at the lower right.

The same usefulness extended to more ordinary people holding slaves. Here an owner has freed a slave and set him up in the business of engraving in gold and silver:

This is dedicated to the spirits of Marcus Canuleius Zosimus, dead at age 28. His former owner set this up to a well-deserving freedman. He in his life spoke ill to no one and did everything according to his ex-master’s wishes. He always had in his possession a great amount of gold and silver, but never ever did he covet any of it. He surpassed all in the art of engraving in the Clodian technique. (
CIL
6.9222 =
ILS
7695, Rome)

This usefulness to the master as a slave is the formative fact of a freedman’s life. It is perfectly conceivable that a master might free a slave out of kindness and consideration for a job well done, or to demonstrate generosity, or to create free dependents who would enhance his social status, or to profit from a slave purchasing his freedom, or even just to get rid of deadwood he no longer wished to spend money on for living expenses. But the most rational progression was from selection of a young slave as especially talented and responsible (and perhaps sexually appealing, as in the case of Trimalchio), to assigning the slave duties, to promoting the slave to management of an aspect of the master’s business affairs, to freeing the slave and continuing to benefit from his services once a freedman, thus retaining economic return without the expense of maintaining a slave.

This brings us to a central observation about freedmen, long noted: Freedmen appear in business of various sorts in large numbers. Not only is this attested to in epigraphy; the phenomenon appears in elite descriptions as well as in novels and documents. The reason for this is that in the Romano-Grecian world the ability to raise capital for a new venture was extremely limited. An ordinary person could not borrow start-up funds easily on reasonable terms because of the comparatively underdeveloped banking and finance system. Incremental growth, i.e. growth funded from direct profits, was always possible, but margins did not facilitate this. On the contrary, freedmen clearly came into business in large numbers with the financial backing of their masters either in operations as a slave, or later as a freedman, or both. For the masters this made perfect sense because they needed reliable persons to act on their behalf. By using slaves, who were legally part of the master, so to speak, and freedmen, who had obligations and ties to the master, a master could be as certain as possible of good management. The legal
authority Gaius affirms this: ‘A reasonable cause for freeing a slave is if he frees him for the sake of having an agent’ (
Institutes
1.19). Through slaves and freedmen, an elite’s business activities could be conducted without trusting free partners or agents, and without the social reprobation of direct business dealings.

For the slave-to-become-freedman, the master held out two inducements to hard work: the promise of freedom for a job well done, and the chance to earn and keep private money, the
peculium
or ‘stash’ that slaves were allowed to accumulate, looking forward to the day of freedom. For a slave with ambition and talent, these inducements coupled with a future in business and hope for a decent life, possibly even wealth, were very appealing. The ongoing relationship of a freedman to his patron ranged widely. There might be none at all (if the patron was dead, or if payment for freedom had severed all important ties), or a very close one if the freedman remained physically in the patron’s household. But the origins of the freedman’s success in freedom were directly bound to his experience under his master, and to opportunities that afforded.

The Brazilian evidence gives us a striking parallel:

Slaves who handled such supervisory positions with skill and responsibility were often rewarded for faithful service. Their owners permitted them to acquire property for their own use, including land and other slaves, and eventually to earn their freedom by buying themselves. Such freedpersons often continued in a client relationship with their former owners; and thus a slave’s ownership of his or her person and of other slaves did not threaten a slave owner. Rather, the success of the slave tended to increase the slave owner’s status and position in society, since command over people was a function of high status in the society. (Karasch,
Slave Life)

A freedman’s life began and was formed within the master’s household, his
familia,
as a slave, a nonperson. Upon manumission he was ‘born again’ and his manumitter, the master, became his ‘patron,’ a word from the same root as
pater,
‘father.’ In legal texts a freedman is equated with a son. The
Digest
states, ‘By freedman or son the person of patron or father should always be honored and held sacred.’ In the official nomenclature of a Roman citizen, the filiation – naming the father – is
replaced with libertation – naming the freeing master, the patron. The restrictions, duties, and obligations of a son were much like those owed by a freedman, although in important ways a freedman was freer than a son who was under the authority of his father. For example, although a son could not marry, or keep his earned money, or hold property in his own right, a freedman could do all these things. But a freedman could not bring lawsuits or bear witness against his patron, as a son could not against his father. Most of all, both were supposed to honor and obey the father/patron as the source of their being; indeed, obedience was the highest good in a slave-become-freedman, as it was in a son or daughter. The burial of freedmen with other family members emphasizes the close connection to the household. The epigraphic record has hundreds of examples of this habit, for example:

Sextus Rubrius Logismos, silversmith, ordered in his will that this grave monument be built for himself and Rubria Aura his freed-woman and Sextus Rubrius Saturninus his son and all his freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants. (
AE
1928.77, Rome)

Eutychia his daughter set this monument up to the Spirits of the Dead and to Titus Labienus Patavinus her well-deserving father and to their freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants. (
CIL
5.2970, Padua, Italy)

From the relationship in slavery and manumission sprang variations of specific obligation, going beyond whatever a possibly ersatz father–son relationship might have supposed. These were of two kinds: unwritten, open-ended ones called
obsequia
(loyal behavior) and
officia
(bounden duties), continuing the ideals of obedience and dutifulness in a slave; and specifically listed ones called
operae
(tasks or specified owed services). The
obsequia
and
officia
expected by the cultural norms might include, in general, anything that would contribute to positive standing in society such as loyalty in disputes with others, publicly acknowledging the social importance of the patron by being a visible client, or helping out if the patron hit a rough patch. A freedman’s owed services that he agreed to overtly upon manumission might differ quite substantially, depending on whether he stayed in the household, or operated
outside it in business or other affairs. Owed services might include such things as a specified number of hours of labor in the patron’s interests or household. And it should be noted that not all slaves had any duties at all to a former master since a slave who purchased his freedom outright might have no ties beyond what he perhaps retained as a purely emotional matter as a former member of the household. In reality both formal and informal kinds of obligation could vary widely, but as they existed they fulfilled a former master’s desire to control and benefit from the existence and labor of his former slave. The direct benefit to the freedman was that performing his duties kept him in the good graces of the patron, and so assured support he might get in life (for example, help in legal troubles) and in business, such as continued capital investment by the patron. The patron benefited both socially and financially. The arrangement was mostly advantageous to both parties.

Abuses quite naturally were common in the system. The freedman might get ‘uppity,’ especially if he was successful in business, and renege on the dutifulness a patron felt was his right. Elite literature is full of railings against ungrateful freedmen, and legal decisions attempt to deal with it as well. Clearly the aristocracy of the empire perceived overpowerful freedmen to be a problem. But for ordinary freedmen the problem was abuses by patrons. One was to demand excessive
operae.
A patron might compel work past the agreed-upon number of years, for example. The
Digest
states that a freedwoman over fifty years old could not be forced to provide labor for her patron, so clearly this had happened; also, a woman who had been freed could not be forced to marry her patron (although if the woman when a slave had promised to marry him upon manumission, she was compelled to follow through on the promise).

Another was to impose on the bonds of loyalty and demand that tasks be done that were inappropriate because of the age of the freedman, or his physical condition, or the time required to perform the task and so take the freedman away from his own gainful employment. Sometimes the master tried to control future behavior of the freedman by forcing him to accept a large loan, thus binding him to the patron through debt; he might also force him to remain unmarried so that the patron would inherit the freedman’s estate, rather than having it go to offspring. In the case of informal manumissions, the patron could and did threaten
to retract the grant of freedom even though this might not be strictly legal; a simple denial that the grant took place would suffice, especially if the patron had been clever and granted the freedom without any witnesses present. The authorities were likely to side with the patron in any dispute, as evidence from Egypt shows: the prefect of Egypt informs a freedman that he will be flogged if the prefect hears any further complaints about him from his patron (
P.Oxy.
4.706). In short, patrons often used whatever means they had, illegal and legal, to bind freedmen; as Artemidorus wrote,‘… many freed slaves nonetheless continue to act as slaves and to be subject to another’ (
Dreams,
2.31).

Because freedmen figure so prominently in elite literature and in the legal writings, it is easy to think that they were numerous. But trying to identify just who is a freedman is a tricky business. To be sure there are some self-identified freedmen, those who announce the status on their tombstones, and some literary examples as well, most notably the cast of Trimalchio’s dinner in Petronius’
Satyricon.
But taking a lead, as so often, from elite literary references to freedmen in every nook and cranny, historians have sought freedmen in large numbers. The search methodology is based upon the fact that there is a reasonable correlation between a certain set of names, mostly of Greek origin, and freedman status as overtly attested to in inscriptions. This fair correlation is then expanded into assertions based upon most if not all persons carrying such names being freedmen, and demographic statistics then follow. Without going into statistical detail, it can be said that this procedure is highly suspect. In fact, there are many apparently freeborn persons with ‘freedman’ names, and announced freedmen with names not on the ‘freedman list.’ The end result is that it cannot be known with any certainty whether a person is a freedman or not unless he tells us so, most normally by using the epigraphic formula ‘freedman of X’ to indicate he was freed by a particular owner.