The position of slaves in the Roman Empire has recently
been investigated by Mr. R. H. Barrow, and now the problem of the liberated slaves has been studied with scholarly care by Mr. A. M. Duff. His monograph on Freedmen in the Early Roman Empire (Clarendon Press, 12s. 6d.) sums up a mass of detailed information, drawn in part from the inscriptions, and shows how prominent freedmen, especially Greeks and Syrians, were in Roman society and, above all, in the Imperial household. Mr. Duff admits that Rome owed much to the Greeks and Orientals for bringing new ideas in trade and administration, as well as in the arts, into the somewhat stagnant channels of Roman thought. Yet he maintains that the freedmen as a class—and a very large class—had, on the whole, a bad influence on the Empire and helped to ruin it. The argument is not wholly convincing, but it must be admitted that, until Hadrian's time, the Roman freedmen were allowed undue privileges and exercised an excessive and harmful influence over policy. Mr. Duff holds that they had been freed inopportunely from their nominal bondage. It is a hard saying, but the author gives reasons for it.
Previous page
