41 pages, paperback
14,8 x 21,0, 2025
According to the Roman jurist Gaius, the foundational divide (summa divisio) in the law of persons was that all individuals were either free or enslaved. From a legal perspective, there was no greater distinction in status for human beings. Nonetheless, this clear-cut division was traversable, as individuals regularly moved between these conditions. This lecture explores the permeable boundary between freedom and enslavement through the lens of gratitude and obligation, particularly through the figure of the “ungrateful freed person.” There was a prevalent cultural assumption that manumitted individuals were perpetually indebted to their former enslavers, making the release from slavery something less than a full ascension to complete autonomy. Roman law granted patrons the ability to bring a formal charge of ingratitude against any of their freed persons who violated prescribed standards of respectful conduct, potentially resulting in a range of penalties, including re-enslavement. Ultimately, the intertwined notions of gratitude, debt, and liberty help to explain the enduring modes of both citizenship and slavery in the Roman world.
The Author
Matthew J. Perry is an associate professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), with appointments at the Graduate Center (Classics) and John Jay College of Criminal Justice (History). His research focuses on Roman social and legal history, especially issues of gender, citizenship, and slavery. He published Gender, Manumission, and the Roman Freedwoman with Cambridge University Press in 2014. His most recent article, “The Lex Scantinia and the Public Response to Stuprum” appears in the 2023 issue of Eugesta: The Journal of Gender Studies in Antiquity.
