Death Mask (Episode 19)

[Julia C]

Wasn't it his grandparents that were slaves? Perhaps I'm mistaken.

[Nephele]

I was wondering myself the Roman view of freedmen marrying Roman citizens. Freedmen couldn't hold office and were still looked down as inferior, but they were allowed to marry Roman citizens seems odd to me? Especially this epidsode they all seem perfectly happy and normal for jocasta to marry posca, no matter how smart he is he still is just a lowly freedman.

Slaves could be manumitted exclusively for the purpose of marrying (cf Pullo/Eirene), because citizens couldn't marry slaves.

 

Jocasta's only claim to a higher marriage was her father, merchant of (that dreadful) Macedonia, and the wealth that came with. Despite being a citizen, she was penniless and "dishonored" by the brutes who killed her family. Not to mention a stoner and orgy-partaker. Prolly the best she could do.

 

I'd be interested to see if Atia, machinatrix optima, tries to sever Jocasta's friendship with Octavia on the basis of being married to a freedman.

 

I think we can safely assume that Posca would be free to marry even a Roman citizen at this point, considering the type of manumission which he most likely was given by Caesar.

 

From Smith's: "There were three modes of Legitima manumissio, the vindicta, the census, and the testamentum: if the manumitted slave was above thirty years of age, if he was the Quiritarian property of his master, and if he was manumitted in proper form (legitime, justa et legitima manumissione) he became a Civis Romanus: if any of these conditions were wanting, he became a Latinus..."

 

Not only this, but it's quite likely that Posca's social standing as Caesar's trusted freedman would have been higher than that of Jocasta's wealthy merchant family into which he married. It was Jocasta who most likely was taking a step up the social ladder by marrying Posca, a member of the Familia Caesaris.

 

In his article titled "Social Mobility in the Early Roman Empire: The Evidence of the Imperial Freedmen and Slaves", written for the journal Past and Present (Oxford University Press, July, 1967), Professor P.R.C. Weaver wrote:

 

The Familia Caesaris, the slaves and freedmen of the emperor's household, were the elite status-group in the slave-freedman section of Roman Imperial society. This was partly due to the pre-eminent status of their master or patron, the emperor himself. But even more important was the nature of their duties. As assistants to the emperor in the performance of many of his manifold magisterial duties they had access to positions of power in the state which were totally inaccessible to other slaves and freedmen outside the Familia... These occupational functions gave the Familia Caesaris status in Roman society as a whole and not only within the slave and freedman classes. From the legal point of view the slave-born orders (servi, liberti) were inferior to free-born society (plebs, equites, senators). However, from the social point of view many liberti enjoyed higher status than many of the plebs. In the Familia Caesaris, most servi and liberti were higher in status than most of the plebs and indeed some had status equal to that of some equestrians...

 

Hence it is to be expected that the members of the Familia Caesaris, and certainly those in the administrative service and favoured posts in the domestic service, would increasingly marry freeborn women once the tradition and status of these services had been firmly established.

 

-- Nephele