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4 - Doubling Up

Patronal and Familial Designations on Epitaphs*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2024

By
Katharine Huemoeller
Edited by
Sinclair W. Bell ,
Dorian Borbonus  and
Rose MacLean
Sinclair W. Bell
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University
Dorian Borbonus
Affiliation:
University of Dayton, Ohio
Rose MacLean
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Summary

On a well-known epitaph from first-century CE Rome, one man commemorates another as his “fellow freedman and, at the same time, dearest companion” (conlibertus idem consors carissimus) (CIL 6, 22355a). The phrase reveals that the men are connected in two ways: by their involuntary legal subjection to the same patron and by their mutual camaraderie. It is the relationship between these two ties, expressed by the Latin idem, that I investigate in this chapter. Over 100 epitaphs employ a form of idem to communicate two distinct but simultaneous bonds, the majority of which were formed through the processes of enslavement and liberation. Employing this corpus of inscriptions, I explore the entanglement of interpersonal ties experienced by freed persons in Roman households. I show that the word libertus/a (freed person), which we often read as a marker of status, is employed on these epitaphs as a relational term, interchangeable and sometimes overlapping with interpersonal ties generated by very different social and legal phenomena, including affection, birth, marriage, and testation.

Keywords

slaverykinshipepigraphymanumissionepitaphs
Type
Chapter
Information
Freed Persons in the Roman World
Status, Diversity, and Representation
 , pp. 119 - 140
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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