The Practice of Manumission through Negotiated Conditions in Imperial Rome

Roman slaves often had to meet expressly negotiated conditions to obtain their freedom. The use of such conditions helps to explain why the Romans freed so many slaves. They are an expression of the economic considerations that underlie the extraction and manumission model of Roman slavery. Agreements between masters and slaves occurred in practice and were recognized at law. Conditions could be set among the living or by testament and could consist of settling accounts, money payments, or services in kind; some followed the slave and were actionable. The money to pay for freedom often came from the slave’s patrimony or peculium. Though evidence is scarce, conditions and the corresponding manumission prices seem to have been of a type that could be met within years rather than decades. Extracting a price from slaves for their freedom lessened the future claims of patrons. For a certain type of slave, negotiated manumission conditions may have been the norm.