Manumission, Greek and Roman RACHEL ZELNICK-ABRAMOVITZ Manumission was the termination of the state of SLAVERY – of the total domination and con- finement of one person by another – and the annulment of his or her legal condition as property. Being freed, the slave became a sub- ject of rights, limited as they were. Manumission in Greece is attested from the sixth century BCE; however, it was very likely practiced even earlier. The earlier evidence mostly comes from literary sources, but epi- graphic documents increase in volume and in geographical range in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. In Rome, reference to manu- mission appears already in the TWELVE TABLES, ca. mid-fifth century BCE. In addition to literary and epigraphic sources, an invaluable source of information is the fortieth book of the DIGESTA. The institution of manumission shows that slavery was not perceived as a permanent con- dition, but as a temporary and dynamic status. Nevertheless, slaves employed in agriculture and mines usually had little prospect of gaining their freedom, unlike slaves employed in the household or in business. In those cases, inti- mate relations between master and slave most likely made it easier to treat the slave outsider as an insider. Manumissions in Rome are said to have far outnumbered those in Greece, an assumption possibly arising from a false impression. In Rome, forms of manumission were established by law. Freed persons were registered, and their status (according to the mode of manumission: see below) was the same all over the empire, so it was easier to track their numbers. Moreover, in Rome it was easier to find out a person’s ser- vile origin by his or her name: a freed slave took the praenomen and nomen of his or her former master in addition to his or her own original or given name (see NAMES, PERSONAL, ROMAN). Not so in the Greek world; where evidence of for- mal manumission procedures and records of manumitted slaves exist, these may well have been local practices and not typical of all Greek poleis (formal manumission, e.g., Kalymna, Tituli Calymni 158; records, e.g., Thessaly, IG IX(2) 539–68). Moreover, the status of freed slaves varied from region to region. Neverthe- less, the fact that Roman citizenship was inclu- sive and was conferred on freed slaves (but with limitations: see later) gives the impression that it was easier to attain manumission in Rome than in Greece, where citizenship was exclusive and zealously guarded. Motives for manumission varied from grat- itude on the owner’s part for good and loyal service or a special act of courage, to plain eco- nomic considerations of profit and loss: often slave-owners offered their slaves the incentive of future manumission, so as to gain better co-operation and goodwill, through various agreements and conditions. These agreements preserved the profit owners made from their slaves, even after manumission. Even manu- missions by testament often stipulated the pay- ment of money to the heirs who, by fulfilling their father’s last wish, would have suffered a loss of property. Manumission in Greece was generally the private initiative of the slave-owner (or his wife or children, with his assent). But sometimes – mostly as a consequence of pressing military needs – it was initiated by the state, which com- pensated the slave-owners (Diodorus Siculus 20.84.3, 100.1–4). Sometimes freedom was also offered to slaves in return for incriminating information about their owners (Lysias 5.3–5). Manumission took various forms, but all of them aimed at achieving the widest pub- licity possible. A slave-owner could manumit his slave orally in the presence of family and friends (Demosthenes 29.25–6), by proclama- tion in a public gathering (such as in the thea- ter, e.g., Aeschines 3.41, 44, or in a sanctuary, e.g., IG V(2) 274 II from Mantinea), by will (Diogenes Laertius 5.14–16 – Aristotle’s will), or by the fictive consecration or sale of the slave to a deity (e.g., IG VII 3330 from Chaeronea, SGDI 1689 from Delphi). These latter “sacral” forms differ from “secular” manumissions 1 The Encyclopedia of Ancient History. Edited by Roger S. Bagnall, Kai Brodersen, Craige B. Champion, Andrew Erskine, and David Hollander. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah13180