Formally manumitted slaves (liberti) were given citizen status in Rome. M. assumes that this distinctively Roman practice resulted in the formation of a subculture (‘freed culture’ or ‘slave and free culture’; pp. 16–17) that influenced Roman values, including those of the elite. After the rise of monarchy, aristocrats, not unlike liberti, were forced to fashion ‘their commemorative personae from within the confines of a subordinate status’ (pp. 172–3) and therefore ‘turned to commemorative strategies that were adapted in part from ex-slaves’ (p. 4).
The first chapter, ‘Freed Slaves and the Roman Elite’, is, in effect, an introduction including theoretical and methodological considerations and a summary of the argument for each of the following chapters (pp. 32–4). While continuing to carry the stigma of their previous status, freedmen, according to M., participated in ‘a discernible subculture’, visible especially in funerary inscriptions, which freedmen in imperial Rome and Italy commissioned ‘in significantly higher proportions than did ingenui of any rank’ (p. 3). Their ‘models’ for commemoration, including ‘the derivation of honor from hard work and loyal service’, were borrowed by members of the elite and ‘provided one mechanism for the transformation of elite culture’ (p. 4). The tomb of the baker Eurysaces at the Porta Maggiore in Rome serves as a point of departure for discussing ‘freed culture’ (pp. 5–15).
Chapter 2, ‘Achieving Immortality under the Principate’, includes sections on: behavioural norms for ex-slaves (pp. 37–41); inscriptions of ex-slaves mentioning fama (‘fame’) (pp. 41–54); the impact of the rise of autocracy on the commemorative strategies of the aristocracy, including the importance of obsequium and industria (pp. 55–61); the possible contribution of Christian ideals and particularly Paul's ‘slave of God’ topos in accepting ‘service and deference’ (p. 62) as something worth commemorating (pp. 61–70). The epigraphic sources chosen for discussion are not always conclusive in respect to the argument advanced. The parallels that M. draws between commemorative strategies found in ex-slaves’ monuments and the ‘path that Tacitus [in Agricola] charts for those seeking to be good under bad emperors’ (p. 60) are nevertheless worth considering.
Chapter 3, ‘Cultural Exchange in Roman Society’, examines literary evidence in an attempt to measure ‘influence from the bottom up’ in Roman society, and ‘the probable mechanisms for exchange across status boundaries’ (p. 73). Petronius’ Cena Trimalchionis (pp. 81–6) is explored for ‘aspects of freed culture’ (p. 83) that were known to Petronius and his readers. Horace's approach to libertas and his claim to be the proud son of a freedman (pp. 86–91), and Seneca's Stoic concept of universal virtue irrespective of status (pp. 91–5) lead M. to conclude that identifying with liberti might have been a fruitful strategy under the Julio-Claudians (p. 91). M. is convinced that Phaedrus was indeed the freedman that he professes to be (p. 97) (as opposed to a member of the Roman elite masquerading as a man of the people, as E. Champlin argues in ‘Faedrus the Fabulous’, JRS 95 [2005], 97–123, at 117) and reads his Fables as an example of ex-slaves’ participation in Roman literary production (pp. 95–103).
Chapter 4, ‘Imperial Freedmen and Imperial Power’, asks how imperial slaves and freedmen may have provided ‘exempla that aristocrats could apply fruitfully to their own situation’ (p. 105), beginning with Claudius’ freedman M. Antonius Pallas and the honours he received from the Roman senate (pp. 107–11). In this case, according to M., the senate ‘endorsed an ex-slave's ability to stand as a positive exemplum’ (p. 129). More plausibly, M. puts forward the hypothesis that the familia Caesaris contributed to the dissemination of imperial ideology and in the integration of personal ties with political institutions during the early imperial period by setting up disproportionately many inscribed funerary monuments and by regularly including their imperial nomina in their inscriptions (p. 123).
Chapter 5, ‘Telling Life Stories’, investigates how some epitaphs demonstrate continuity in the life course of former slaves despite the change of status from slavery to freedom (pp. 136–43). Some freedmen referred to their spouse as contubernalis even after manumission (pp. 142–4). A few liberti evoked work as a source of continuity between their status as freedmen and their servile past (pp. 144–6). Votive inscriptions containing the formula servus vovit, liber solvit are adduced as evidence that religion could serve the same purpose (pp. 147–51). M. argues against the view that the formula was used by liberti to express gratitude for a god's assistance in attaining their freedom. She suggests instead that the juxtaposition of servus and liber was used ‘to advertise upward mobility’ (p. 150). In the last section of this chapter, M. returns to Stoic and early Christian philosophy and contends that Seneca's, Epictetus’ and Paul's focus on ethics as a source of prestige is comparable with ex-slaves’ commemorative practices, in that it appealed to ‘sources of meaning’ (p. 164) beyond ancestry and political office.
As a minor point of criticism, although M. is otherwise aware of methodological problems, her concept of a ‘freed culture’ risks being anachronistic and projecting backward onto Roman society an attitude formed by modern identity politics. It is not self-evident that common experiences would result in shared values among ex-slaves (p. 18 and passim) or that stigmatised members of Roman society would want to be associated with each other and to form communities or groups, real or imagined.
A serious objection to M.’s argument is her treatment of epigraphic evidence. She opts for a qualitative as opposed to a quantitative approach, but her conclusions are not always borne out by the inscriptions she chooses to discuss. M. takes Eurysaces to have been a libertus, ‘to illustrate commemorative strategies examined in the rest of this study’ (p. 11). The sole indication that Eurysaces may have been an ex-slave is his Greek cognomen. He may have been an enfranchised provincial instead. Further, despite doubts concerning the reading of APPARET as apparet(oris) on the western face of this monument (p. 5 n. 24; p. 13), M. assumes Eurysaces had passed ‘a range of statuses’ (p. 14) and, ‘buoyed by wealth and personal connections’ (p. 11), had succeeded in becoming a public servant (pp. 11, 13).
Further, M. takes the epitaph CIL 6.14211 as evidence of a connection between fama and the economic activity of a libertus. This inscription is known only from a copy of Cyriacus of Ancona and presents difficulties, discussed by P. Boyancé in REL 33, 1955 [1956], 113–20. Boyancé saw in the deceased, who carried the very unusual name Ikadium, a child or young person (p. 120), the son of a freedwoman named Calpurnia Anthis. Ikadium was himself a freedman: of Calpurnia, the third and last wife of Julius Caesar. M. adopts Boyancé’s reading of the text but not his interpretation. Though the epitaph clearly suggests that the source of Ikadium's fame and luck were his famous patroness and his loving friends, M. sees in Ikadium a successful professional who enjoyed fama and fortuna thanks to his occupation and ‘financial success of some kind’ (p. 47).
The book is always readable and often engaging, and can be recommended for its perceptive exploration of aspects of Roman society, for its insightful analysis of literary sources and for suggesting plausible alternatives to the trickle-down effect to explain the diffusion of paradigms and ideals.
The bibliography includes approximately twice as many titles as are cited in the text. Misprints seem concentrated in the first chapter, whereas the rest of the book is well edited: p. 4 n. 19, ‘Petersen and Joshel (2014)’ should be ‘Joshel and Petersen (2014)’; p. 4 n. 19, Certeau 1984 is missing from the bibliography; p. 10, in the caption of fig. 5, what should have been ‘with permission of’ has been printed in Italian (‘su concessione del’); p. 22 n. 89, ‘Eck 2010b’ should be Eck 2010a.
