Municipal Freedmen and Intergenerational Social Mobility in Roman Italy

Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-90-04-68634-2
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 21, 370 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 839 g

Reihe: Brill Studies in Greek and Roman Epigraphy

This book challenges prevailing models of the ways formerly enslaved individuals in Ancient Rome navigated their social and economic landscape. Drawing on the rich epigraphic evidence left behind by municipal freedmen and freedwomen, who had been owned and manumitted by the communities of Roman Italy, it pushes back against ameliorating views of slavery as a temporary condition and positive notions of a prosperous and consciously proud Roman freedman class. Manumission was a far more complex process, and it did not always put former slaves and their descendants on the straight and narrow path of upward mobility.

Autoren/Hrsg.

A Easton, Jeffrey

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Geschichte der klassischen Antike

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Figures and Tables

Abbreviations

Introduction: Trimalchio’s Shadow: Former Slaves and Social Mobility in the Roman World

1 Social Mobility in the Roman Empire

2 The Case-Study of Roman Municipal Freedmen and Freedwomen and Their Families

1 Leaving a Mark: Municipal Freedmen and Roman Epigraphy

1 Cataloguing the Evidence

2 Former Municipal Slaves and Their Families

3 Final Methodological Thoughts

2 From Everyone’s Slave to Patronless Freedman

1 The Size of the Municipal familia publica

2 Manumission and the familia publica

3 Conclusions

3 Starting from Scratch

1 Staying Close to Home: Settlement Patterns

2 Marriage Patterns and Social Connections

3 Municipal Freedmen and the Associative Order

4 Conclusions

4 Little Fish in a Big Labor Market

1 Shallow Roots: Settlement Patterns

2 Social and Economic Mobility of the Descendants

3 Conclusions

5 Conclusions: Names on a Tombstone

Appendix 1: Demographic Estimates of Select Cities in Italy

Appendix 2: Catalogue of Municipal Freedmen and Freedwomen (L)

Appendix 3: Catalogue of Descendants of Municipal Freedmen and Freedwomen (D)

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Jeffrey A. Easton, Ph.D. (2019), University of Toronto, is Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Southwestern University. His research and publications focus on Latin epigraphy and social, economic, and political institutions in the Roman empire.