Title: Creating new citizens: freed slaves, the state and citizenship in early Rome and under Augustus
Abstract: Abstract In the first year of the Republic there was a conspiracy which failed because a slave reported it to the authorities. As a reward he received a sum of money and was granted his freedom as well as Roman citizenship. The historian Livy claims that this was the first time a slave was freed through the procedure of manumissio vindicta, and that the ceremony derived its name from the slave in question: Vindicius. Many scholars have pointed out that the story is unlikely to be historically accurate. Instead of demonstrating the accuracy or inaccuracy of Livy's story, however, the present study wants to suggest that in addition to providing an etymological explanation for a key procedure in the manumission of slaves Livy may have aimed to present the story as a specific deserving case of the granting of freedom and citizenship. This should be understood against the backdrop of the turbulent times that Livy's readers had recently experienced and the attempts by Augustus to re-energize Rome's destiny on the firm footing of its past moral foundations. Within this perspective Vindicius' act of story may be viewed as an essential contribution to the freedom of the Roman people. Livy achieves this above all by screening out the fact that in order to save the state Vindicius has to betray his own familia. This aspect receives additional importance against the many examples in the history of the first century BC of slaves betraying their masters for money. Vindicius' stance is ideologically correct and therefore in agreement with the Roman perception of the good slave. Keywords: slaverymanumissionRomeAugustusLivy Notes 1. The uniqueness of Rome in this area is rightly stressed by Finley, 1980 Finley, Moses I. 1980. Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, London: Chatto & Windus. [Google Scholar], 97. For the frequency of manumission, cf. Wiedemann, 1985 Wiedemann, Thomas. 1985. The regularity of manumission at Rome. Classical Quarterly, 35: 162–75. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. 2. For the position of metics in Athenian society, cf. Whitehead, 1977 Whitehead, David. 1977. The Ideology of the Athenian Metic, Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society. [Google Scholar]. 3. For the awarding of freedom to slaves in the Greek world, cf. Carandini, 1908 Carandini, Aristide. 1908. La manomissione e la condizione dei liberti in Grecia, Milan: Ulrico Hoepli. [Google Scholar]; Zelnick-Abramovitz, 2005 Zelnick-Abramovitz, R. 2005. Not Wholly Free: The Concept of Manumission and the Status of Manumitted Slaves in the Ancient Greek World, Leiden: E.J. Brill. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; see also her chapter in this issue. For the participation of slaves in certain types of civic ritual, cf. Schmitt-Pantel, 1992 Schmitt-Pantel, Pauline. 1992. La cité au banquet: histoire des repas publics dans les cités grecques, Rome: École française de Rome. [Google Scholar], 399–401. It is not my intention to argue that all these occasions should be considered as important evidence to counter the idea that slaves were marginalised, but they do show that even slaves were not completely marginalised. 4. The idea that citizenship was more prominent in Latin America than in the United States serves as the platform for a comparison between the two slave societies in Tannenbaum, 1946 Tannenbaum, Frank. 1946. Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas, New York: Vintage Books. [Google Scholar]. 5. Cf. Foner, 1984 Foner, Eric. 1984. Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and its Legacy, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. [Google Scholar]. 6. Chantraine, 1972 Chantraine, Heinrich. 1972. "Zur Entstehung der Freilassung mit Bürgerrechtserwerb in Rom". In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Vol. 1.2, 59–67. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] gives an overview of the theories that have been proposed since Mommsen. He rejects all of them and suggests that the extension of citizenship to freed slaves was influenced by the Roman decision to grant citizenship to subjected people, especially because slaves and conquered people came from the same geographical areas. The standard work on Roman citizenship by Sherwin-White, 1973 Sherwin-White, A.N. 1973. Roman Citizenship, Oxford: Clarendon Press. (reprint of the first edition, Oxford 1939) [Google Scholar] (the original date of publication is 1939) does not offer a discussion. 7. In order to explain the pairing of freedom and citizenship in the Roman world students of Roman slavery focus instead on another text, one of a quite different calibre. Two letters inscribed on stone written by the Macedonian king Philip V deal with the issue of population decrease suffered by the city of Larissa in Thessaly. One letter dates to 217 BC, the other to 215 BC (Inscriptiones Graecae 9.2.517). Philip's letters respond to a request by the people from Larissa to introduce measures to counter the shrinking of the city's population. One of the measures that Philip suggests is to award citizenship rights to resident foreigners along the lines of the Roman state granting citizenship rights to manumitted slaves. For a recent discussion of Philip V's views on manumission and citizenship, cf. Weiler, 2003 Weiler, Ingomar. 2003. Die Beendigung des Sklavenstatus im Altertum: ein Beitrag zur vergelichenden Sozialgeschichte, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. [Google Scholar], 172–80. 8. There is considerable doubt whether the events as described by Livy took place in 509 or whether they took place at all. In recent syntheses of the history of early Rome it is stressed that that we have no way of knowing whether certain events are fiction or not and that there is therefore no reason to assume that the events are not true, cf. Cornell, 1995 Cornell, T.J. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic wars (c. 1000–264 BC), London and New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 217. For a reaction to this approach, cf. Wiseman, 1998 Wiseman, T.P. 1998. Roman Republic, year one. Greece & Rome, 45: 19–26. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 24. 9. Liv. 2.3–5; Dion. 5.6–13; Plut. Publ. 3–8. The accounts occasionally differ, for which see Gundel, 1961 Gundel, Hans. 1961. "Vindicius". In Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertums-wissenschaft, vol. 17, 37–9. Stuttgart: Alfred Druckenmüller Verlag. [Google Scholar], but this will not be the focus of my study. 10. This is a type of manumission named after the rod (vindicta) with which the slave is touched when he or she is manumitted. 11. In his account (2.5.6–8) Livy has a marked shift in the audience's gaze from the sons who are being executed to the father who is watching his sons. 12. In Dionysius" account Vindicius is only briefly mentioned on two separate occasions (5.7.3–5; 5.13.1), and only once by name. On the second occasion the rewards offered to Vindicius are briefly summarised: freedom coupled with citizenship and a large sum of money, but Dionysius fails to make mention of the procedure of manumissio vindicta. 13. For example: 1.45.4; 1.55.5; 2.7.2; 2.36.8; 6.33.5; 8.6.1, for which see Walsh, 1961 Walsh, P.G. 1961. Livy: His Historical Aims and Methods, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar], 47–8, with note 1 at 48. 14. Dionysius (5.6.4) and Plutarch (Publ. 3.3) also supply the names of the two Junii, the two Vitellii and the two Aquillii. The only discrepancy between the three main accounts is that Dionysius and Plutarch maintain that the conspirators assembled at the house of the Aquillii, whereas Livy asserts that it was at the house of the Vitellii. I am not sure whether Livy wants to use this information to demonstrate that his research has been more thorough than that of his predecessors or that he wishes to argue that they were simply wrong to think that there were others who were involved as well. 15. Ogilvie, 1965 Ogilvie, R.M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy, Books 1–5, Oxford: Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], 241. Compare Watson, 1975 Watson, Alan. 1975. Rome of the XII Tables: Persons and Property, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar], 89, who points out that at the end of Livy's text the language is properly legal. Daube, 1946 Daube, D. 1946. "Two early patterns of manumission." Journal of Roman Studies, 36: 57–75. [Google Scholar], 75, argues that Livy's post illum observatum etc. is very close to a passage in the lex Salpensana, which states: qui ita manumissus erit … liber esto. 16. Cf. the discussion in Ogilvie, 1965 Ogilvie, R.M. 1965. A Commentary on Livy, Books 1–5, Oxford: Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], 241. Watson, 1975 Watson, Alan. 1975. Rome of the XII Tables: Persons and Property, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar], 88, states that the derivation of vindicta from Vindicius is impossible. Gundel, 1961 Gundel, Hans. 1961. "Vindicius". In Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertums-wissenschaft, vol. 17, 37–9. Stuttgart: Alfred Druckenmüller Verlag. [Google Scholar], 37, points out that Schulze, 1904 Schulze, Wilhelm. 1904. Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen, Berlin: Weidmann. [Google Scholar] has not seen fit to include Vindicius in his authoritative list of attested Roman names. In later references to the story the name Vindicius has been replaced with Vindex. This is the case in the poet Claudian's panegyric of the emperor Honorius on the occasion of his fourth consulship (613). 17. For an overview of the ceremony, cf. Buckland, 1908 Buckland, W.W. 1970. The Roman Law of Slavery, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (reprint of the first edition, Cambridge, 1908) [Google Scholar], 441–2; Duff, 1928 Duff, A.M. 1958. Freedmen in the Early Roman Empire, New York: Barnes and Noble. (reissue of the original edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928) [Google Scholar], 23–4; Watson, 1975 Watson, Alan. 1975. Rome of the XII Tables: Persons and Property, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar], 86–7; Wolf, 1991 Wolf, Joseph Georg. 1991. "Die manumissio vindicta und der Freiheitsprozeß. Eine Rekonstruktionsversuch". In Libertas. Grundrechtliche und rechtsstaatliche Gewährungen in Antike und Gegenwart. Symposion aus Anlaß des 80. 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In Claudian's Panegyric on the fourth consulship of the emperor Honorius (612–18), dated to AD 398, the case of Vindicius, here appearing under the name Vindex, is still celebrated as a persistent part of the events leading to freedom for the Roman people in the first year of the Republic.
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