Manumission

Those readers around 30 years old or so will be disappointed in this post, I’m sure. Manumission is a club night in Ibiza – still going at the time of writing, I believe. The idea of it was “anyone in Manumission is free to do or be whatever they choose as long as it does not harm anyone else”. Seeing as all most people seem to want to do is take industrial quantities of mind-altering substances and dance with a stupid grin on their face for nine hours, that policy seems to work well. Sorry if I misled you lucky young things with the title.

The word “freedom” is the keyword in the original sense too. Manumission is a Latin word, meaning literally “releasing the hand”. In Roman times, citizens of the Republic were freemen – they could own land and vote and exercise all the other privileges that came with freedom. Slaves, however – whilst not always badly treated – were just that, slaves. They belonged to a freeman of Rome and were required to do their bidding under pain of harsh physical punishment, or in extreme cases, death. Because the slaves belonged to people, their children, too, would be the property of the master and also enslaved.

So, manumission was the releasing of the hand of the owner, conferring liberty. If a slave was manumitted, he or she became relatively free of their obligations. I say “relatively” because being manumitted was not always equal to being a freeman of Rome. One of their obligations was – both in public and in private – obseqium. This meant they had to bow and grovel in the presence of their former master. There was often a clause in the manumission requiring the slaves to return into service for a specified number of days every year – at the old master’s behest, of course.

A slave could be manumitted in several ways. Usually, this was stipulated in the last will and testament of the master. I suspect there were too many freed this way, because in 2 BC, Nero passed a law called Lex Fufia Caninia, limiting the number of slaves allowed to be freed as a last will. Slaves freed while the master was still living often received a small pension and a silver ring to denote their new unfettered status. They were rarely seen as freemen, though. There was still the stigma of having been in service, which is why many chose to start a new life in the countryside. Those who were not formally manumitted (in a court, by having their name transferred from the “property” ledger to the “people” ledger during a census, or in a will) were also not “Freemen of Rome” but were given something called “Latin Status” which meant that they couldn’t vote, hold office or engage in any commercial activities and would be obliged to ask the former master”s permission to marry.

And you thought your day at work was bad?