This thesis offers the first full-scale analysis of the epigraphic evidence for Roman freedwomen, i.e. an analysis of all Latin inscriptions mentioning libertae in the Roman Empire – almost 10,000 texts – from the city of Rome, Italy and the provinces. The aim of this project is to present a fuller image of the lives of these women, based on the evidence left behind by themselves and those in close contact with them, to put a check on their portrayal in the ancient literary sources, which has strongly influenced the modern understanding of libertae. The inscriptions have been drawn from the standard corpora and databases (esp. CIL and AE), and assembled in a searchable FileMaker Pro database. The study of the data has been conducted in two parts, the first focussing on the role of freedwomen in the familia, and the second on the role achieved by libertae in their communities and the wider Roman society, including also analysis of the identity of freedwomen’s partners, the marital terms used in inscriptions to describe married freedwomen, the legal status of freedwoman’s children, the women’s (and their relatives’) involvement in professions as well as cultic activities. The method employed in the discussion of the material is that of methodical argumentation, progressively building a new and fresh image of Roman libertae in the course of the thesis. The results demonstrate that the focus on the city of Rome adopted by many scholars distorts the picture substantially, as does the focus on the literary sources; in particular, the women emerge from this study as endowed with greater agency than hitherto accepted, and their ‘double flaw’ of having a servile past and of being of female gender appears less of an obstacle in their lives than widely assumed: epigraphically attested libertae do not conform to the image of ‘the Roman freedman’. This thesis thus represents both a contribution to the study of Latin epigraphy and the study of women in the Roman world. The analysis is supported by two appendices: the Appendix Epigraphica offers a list of many of the texts discussed in the chapters, together with an English translation; the Appendix Graphica assembles all the graphs and tables employed in the thesis to analyse the data.

This thesis presents the array of evidence concerning three crucial aspects of Roman maternity: pregnancy, childbirth, and primary care-givers. I explore how these elements of maternity are represented in the ancient sources and observe how the evidence corresponds to and diverges from the established impressions of these facets of maternity. I consider several issues surrounding the critical, initial moments of the life-cycle and how they are informed by biological factors, social structures, and cultural projections. Motherhood and childhood at Rome have garnered a great deal of interest, but issues of conception, gestation, childbirth, and early infant care have received much less attention. In this thesis they are considered together and thus in light of one another. The first chapter of this study surveys the social context of Roman maternity through an examination of the purpose of an extensive reproductive period, its associated problems, and the impact that such a practice had on Roman attitudes towards pregnancy and childbirth. The second and third chapters of this study are dedicated to an examination of the social and cultural identity of the two slaves who provided crucial functions throughout the pregnancy, delivery, and post-natal care of the Roman mother and child: the obstetrix (midwife) and the nutrix (wet-nurse). The final chapter shifts the focus from couples who sought to create a Roman family of their own to those who chose to limit the size of their families through contraception, abortion, infanticide, or infant exposure. I examine the attitudes towards these methods of family limitation and the critical role that parental intent had in the formation of these perceptions. By drawing on a range of ancient material, chief among which are medical writers, jurists, and funerary inscriptions, I argue that social status and demographic realities, such as high maternal and infant mortality rates, played equally significant roles in these central aspects of Roman maternity, and indeed influenced one another. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis offers an investigation into the roles of slaves and freedmen and the extent of their involvement in the Romans’ legal and literary discourse on adultery and the legislation introduced to address it – the lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis. It also seeks to assert their place more firmly within the context of the Roman familia and explore what this means in the context of the adultery statute. This thesis reasserts the position of slaves and freedmen within the Roman familia as a whole and, more specifically, as individuals deserving and requiring of consideration within the context of the analysis of the adultery statute and other social legislation. A multi-disciplinary approach has been adopted in this thesis to address the multiple avenues apparent in the investigation. A detailed analysis of the primary extant source of the statute, found in Justinian’s Digest, was carried out to determine the extent of the inclusion of the servile and freed in adulterous relationships and how much consideration was shown to them by the legal writers, or jurists. As a corollary to this analysis, a range of literary works, from Ovid, the Elder Seneca, Quintilian, Tacitus and Suetonius, was examined to provide a counterpoint to the legal perspective on the inclusion of slaves and freedmen within adulterous relationships, and, subsequently, the familia. Re-assessing the roles of slaves and freedmen within adulterous relationships and the legislation aimed at controlling this crime also necessitates another reassessment – namely, that of the motivations behind the introduction of the statute itself. Notoriously difficult to determine, this thesis posits, in conclusion, that, rather than being an instrument of the moral indignation of the contemporary Roman population, the adultery legislation was instituted as an instrument of economic control to counter the potential dilution of the wealth of the elite of Rome by illegitimate children. Slaves and freedmen were, then, a crucial element of a deceptively complex piece of legislation typically assumed to affect and address members of the Roman elite only.

In Roman society, freed slaves were elevated to a citizen-like status, yet they never had the full rights of their free-born counterparts. Despite the inequality of the system, many freedmen appear to have found great success in the realm of business. This report endeavors to reveal why it was that this group prospered within the Roman economy using a pseudo-Darwinian perspective. Scholarship has, for the most part, tended to avoid Darwinian lines of thought in sociological studies but this report shows the power of this type of thinking. The first chapter clarifies the nature of slavery in the Roman world and the wide variety of experiences that slaves could have. Chapter two considers the different ways that slaves could be manumitted and how a freedman’s status could differ depending on the formality of his release from servitude. The third chapter examines the literary representations of freedmen in the genre of comedy and Petronius’ Satyricon. Chapter four turns to the archaeological evidence and provides a sense of how freedmen represented themselves to the wider community. Lastly, the fifth chapter, using a pseudo-Darwinian model, will show that the image of the successful freedman is not an anomaly of the archaeological record or a trope of Latin literature but an inevitable outcome of the intense selection that slaves underwent. / text