The freedman economy of Roman Italy

Abstract

Rome was one of history’s major slave societies. The economy of Roman Italy in the late republic and early empire has often been described as a slave economy. Yet, looking at the literary, legal and epigraphic evidence, freedmen are considerably more prominent than slaves in positions requiring special skills and responsibilities. Although slaves quantitatively outnumbered freedmen, freedmen qualitatively outranked slaves as agents, managers, and entrepreneurs. Whereas unskilled slaves were relatively easily replaceable, skilled freedmen were not. In crucial sectors of the economy slavery was a passing phase necessary to produce freedmen: an investment in human resources yielding its greatest fruits after manumission. In this paper I will argue that the economy of Roman Italy may with as much good cause be characterized as a ‘freedmen economy’ than as a ‘slave economy’. ‘Freedmanship’ should not be reduced to an epiphenomenon of slavery but be acknowledged as a relation of structural importance for the Italian economy.