RACE MIXTURE IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
by TENNEY FRANK
The following article by Tenney Frank originally appeared in the American
Historical Review (July 1916, vol. 21, no. 4: 689–708). Frank (1876–1939),
an American historian, was professor at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore,
Maryland, and the author of several books, including A History of Rome
(1923), Economic History of Rome (1920), Catullus and Horace (1928),
and Roman Imperialism (1914).
There is one surprise that the historian usually experiences upon his first
visit to Rome. It may be at the Galleria Lapidaria of the Vatican or at the
Lateran Museum, but, if not elsewhere, it can hardly escape him upon
his first walk up the Appian Way. As he stops to decipher the names upon the
old tombs that line the road, hoping to chance upon one familiar to him from
his Cicero or Livy, he finds praenomen and nomen promising enough, but
the cognomina all seem awry. L. Lucretius Pamphilus, A. Aemilius Alexa, M.
Clodius Philostorgus do not smack of freshman Latin. And he will not readily
find in the Roman writers now extant an answer to the questions that these
inscriptions invariably raise. Do these names imply that the Roman stock was
completely changed after Cicero’s day, and was the satirist recording a fact
when he wailed that the Tiber had captured the waters of the Syrian Orontes?
If so, are these foreigners ordinary immigrants, or did Rome become a nation
of ex-slaves and their offspring? Or does the abundance of Greek cognomina
mean that, to a certain extent, a foreign nomenclature has gained respect, so that
a Roman dignitary might, so to speak, sign a name like C. Julius Abascantus
on the hotel register without any misgivings about the accommodations?
Unfortunately, most of the sociological and political data of the empire are
provided by satirists. When Tacitus informs us that in Nero’s day a great many
of Rome’s senators and knights were descendants of slaves and the native stock
had dwindled to surprisingly small proportions, we are not sure whether we
are not to take it as an exaggerated thrust by an indignant Roman of the old
stock. At any rate, this, like similar remarks equally indirect, receives totally
different evaluation in the discussion of those who have treated of Rome’s
society, like Friedländer, Dill, Mommsen, Wallon, and Marquardt. To discover
some new light upon these fundamental questions of Roman history, I have
tried to gather such fragmentary data as the corpus of inscriptions might
afford. This evidence is never decisive in its purport, and it is always, by the
very nature of the material, partial in its scope, but at any rate it may help us 52 Vol. 5, No. 4
The Occidental Quarterly to interpret our literary sources to some extent. It has at least convinced me
that Juvenal and Tacitus were not exaggerating. It is probable that when these
men wrote a very small percentage of the free plebeians on the streets of Rome
could prove unmixed Italian descent. By far the larger part, perhaps ninety
percent, had Oriental blood in their veins.
My first quest was for information about the stock of the ordinary citizen
of Rome during the empire. In the Corpus of Latin Inscriptions the editors, after
publishing the honorary and sepulchral inscriptions of the nobles and military
classes, followed by those of the slaves and humble classes which occur in the
columbaria, gave the rest of the city’s sepulchral inscriptions (19,260) in alphabetical order.
Of these I read the 13,900 contained in volume VI., parts 2 and
3, which, despite the occurrence of some slaves as well as of some persons of
wealth, represent on the whole the ordinary type of urban plebeians. A mere
classification of all these names into lists of natives on the one hand and slaves
and foreigners on the other would be of little service, since, obviously, transient
foreigners are of little importance in estimating the stock of the permanent
population of Rome, and we must face the question at once whether or not
the slave and freedman stock permanently merged into the civil population.
Furthermore, such lists will be at everyone’s hand as soon as the index of the
sixth volume of CIL is published. In reckoning up the foreign stock, therefore,
I have counted only those who, according to the inscriptions, were presumably born at Rome.
A somewhat arbitrary definition of limits was necessary
since we are seldom given definite information about the place of birth, but
as I have used the same classification for the free-born as for the slave-born
the results are valid for our purposes. For instance, in getting statistics of
birth, I have included all children under ten years of age, assuming that slave
children under that age would rarely be brought in from abroad; and if slaves
of this class are counted, the free-born of the same class must also be reckoned
with. I have also included slave and free-born children who appear to be with
father, mother, brother, or sister at Rome, since presumably they would have
been sundered from their family if they had been brought in from the foreign
market; and again, in order to reach fair results, the corresponding persons of
free birth are counted.
For reasons which will presently appear I have accepted
the Greek cognomen as a true indication of recent foreign extraction, and,
since citizens of native stock did not as a rule unite in marriage with liberty, a
Greek cognomen in a child or one parent is sufficient evidence of status. As is
well known, certain Latin cognomina, e.g., Salvius, Hilarus, Fortunatus, were
so frequently borne by slaves and freedmen that they were apt to be avoided
by the better classes. Nevertheless, since no definite rule is attainable in the
matter, I have credited the bearers of all Latin names to the native stock in all
cases of doubt.
Classifying in this way the names of the aforesaid 13,900 inscriptions of
volume VI., parts 2 and 3, we find that of the 4,485 persons apparently born at Rome, 3,723 (eighty-three percent) fall into the list which by our criteria
represents foreign extraction. This figure is probably not far from correct, but
I think it would be raised somewhat if it were possible to decide what proportion of Latin cognomina conceals slaves and liberti. For instance, a name like Q.
Manlius Restitutus (VI. 22,015) would usually pass with little suspicion. But the
inscription also names his father, mother, wife, and two sons, all of whom have
Greek cognomina. Because of his parentage I have classed him as of foreign
stock, but there are scores of brief inscriptions in which the necessary facts are
not provided. In these the subject had to be classed, however erroneously, as
Latin.
In order to reckon if possible the margin of error in cases like this, I have
attempted to test the respectability of Latin cognomina, but with rather unsatisfactory results. I counted all the names of slaves and freedmen in the indexes
of volumes V., IX., XIV., and over a thousand in volume VI., in order to get
a group of fi ve thousand bearing the prevalent slave-names. More than half
(2,874) have Greek names, the most popular of these being Eros (58 times),
Pamphilus (36), Antiochus (34), Hermes (30), Alexander (28), Philomusus (26),
Onesimus (22), Philargyrus (21), names, most of which were also very popular
among free Greeks and Asiatics. Two thousand one hundred and twenty-six
have Latin names, some of which occur with remarkable frequency, e.g., Felix
(97), Hilarus –a (64-53), Faustus –a (58-33), Salvius –a (38-18), Fortunatus –a
(29-15), Primus –a (51-47), Secundus –a (25-34), Tertius –a (18-18), Auctus –a
(24-25), Vitalis (36), Januarius –a (22-6). Now, if we compare these Latin names
with those borne by better-class Roman plebeians, by the pretorian guards,
for instance (though many descendants of slaves served even in the pretorian
guards), we find, despite a certain overlapping, quite a striking difference.
Apparently some names had acquired such sordid associations that they were
in general avoided by ordinary plebeians. The favorite names on the pretorian
lists are Maximus, Proculus, Severus, Verus, Capito, Justus, Celer, Marcellus,
Clemens, Victor, and the like. We may not say that any Latin name was confi ned
wholly to slaves, nor would it be possible to give any usable list of relative
percentages, but we may at least say that the Romans recognized such names
as Salvius, Hilarus, Fortunatus, Optatus, Auctus, Vitalis, Januarius, as being
peculiarly appropriate to slaves; and Felix, Faustus, Primus, Primitivus, and
a few others must have cast some suspicion upon the bearer. After reviewing
in this light the seventeen percent of possible claimants of Latin origin in the
alphabetical list of inscriptions in volume VI., parts 2 and 3, I have little doubt
that a third of these would, with fuller evidence, be shifted into the class of
non-Latins.
On the other hand, the question has been raised whether a man with Greek
cognomen must invariably be of foreign stock. Could it not be that Greek
names became so popular that, like Biblical and classical names today, they
were accepted by Romans of native stock? In the last days of the empire this may have been the case;4 but the inscriptions prove that the Greek cognomen
was not in good repute. I have tested this matter by classifying all the instances
in the 13,900 inscriptions (there are 1,347) where the names of both the father
and son appear.5 From this it appears that fathers with Greek names are very
prone to give Latin names to their children, whereas the reverse is not true.
The statistics are as follows:
Greek cognomen Latin cognomen
Father 859 488
Son Greek Latin Greek Latin
460 399 53 435
This means that in one generation Greek names diminish from sixty-four
percent to thirty-eight percent, or that forty-six percent of the fathers with
Greek names give their sons Latin names, while only eleven percent of the
Latin fathers give their sons Greek names. And this eleven percent dwindles
upon examination into a negligible quantity. For instance, in seventeen of the
fi fty-three cases the mother’s name is Greek, which betrays the true status of
the family; and in ten other instances the son’s gentile name differs from that of
the “father,” who is, therefore, probably a stepfather. In almost all of the other
twenty-six instances, the inscription is too brief to furnish a fair criterion for
judging. Clearly the Greek name was considered as a sign of dubious origin
among the Roman plebeians, and the freedman family that rose to any social
ambitions made short shrift of it. For these reasons, therefore, I consider that
the presence of a Greek name in the immediate family is good evidence that
the subject of the inscription is of servile or foreign stock. The conclusion of
our pros and cons must be that nearly ninety percent of the Roman-born folk
represented in the above-mentioned sepulchral inscriptions of CIL, volume
VI., parts 2 and 3, are of foreign extraction.
Who are these Romans of the new type and whence do they come? How
many are immigrants and how many are of servile extraction? Of what race
are they? Seneca happens to make a remark which is often quoted as proof
of extensive immigration to Rome. He writes to his mother in derision of
Rome:
Of this crowd the greater part have no country; from their own free towns
and colonies, in a word, from the whole globe, they are congregated.
Some are brought by ambition, some by the call of public duty, or by
reason of some mission, others by luxury which seeks a harbor rich and
commodious for vices, others by the eager pursuit of liberal studies,
others by shows, etc.6
Seneca apparently refers in large part to visitors, but also to immigrants.
In so far as he has transients in mind we are not concerned with the passage, for such people did little to affect the permanent racial complexion of Rome’s
civil population. A passage in Juvenal’s third satire is perhaps more to the
point, for he seems to imply that the Oriental has come to stay.
While every land…daily pours
Its starving myriads forth. Hither they come
To batten on the genial soil of Rome,
Minions, then lords of every princely dome,
Grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician,
Rope-dancer, conjurer, fi ddler, and physician.
This passage clearly suggests that foreigners of their own free will have
drifted to Rome in great numbers to make it their place of livelihood and their
permanent abode. I cannot here treat the whole problem, but, while agreeing
that the implication of this passage is true to a certain degree, I would question
whether the generalities in it are not too sweeping. It may well be that many
of the ex-slave rabble who spoke the languages of the East imposed upon the
uncritical by passing as free-born immigrants. Even freedmen were not beyond
pretending7
that they had voluntarily chosen slavery as a means of attaining to
Roman citizenship by way of the vindicta.At any rate, the Roman inscriptions
have very few records of free-born foreigners. Such men, unless they attained
to citizenship,8
ought to bear names like that in no. 17,171, Dis man. Epaeneti,
Epaeneti F. Ephesio, but there are not a dozen names of this sort to be found
among the inscriptions of volume VI., parts 2 and 3. Nor need we assume that
many persons of this kind are concealed among the inscriptions that bear the
tria nomina, for immigrants of this class did not often perform the services for
which the state granted citizenship. There could hardly have been an infl ux
of foreign free-born laborers at Rome, for Rome was not an industrial city and
was more than well provided with poor citizens who could not compete with
slaves and had to live upon the state’s bounty. Indeed, an examination of the
laborious article by Kuhn9
fails to reveal any free-born foreigners among the
skilled laborers of the city. In regard to shop-keepers, merchants, and traders
we may refer to a careful discussion by Parvan.10 He has convincingly shown
that the retail trade was carried on at Rome, not by foreigners but by Romans
of the lower classes, mostly slaves and freedmen, and that while the provincials of Asia and Egypt continued throughout the empire to carry most of the
imports of the East to Rome, the Roman houses had charge of the wholesale
trade in the city. The free-born foreigner did not make any inroad upon this
fi eld. However, in various arts and crafts, such as those mentioned by Juvenal,
the free immigrant could gain a livelihood at Rome. Some of the teachers of
rhetoric, philosophy, and mathematics, some of the doctors, sculptors, architects, painters, and the like, were citizens of the provincial cities who went to
Rome for greater remuneration. But even most of these professions were in
the hands of slaves and freedmen who had been given a specialized education
by their masters. In volume VI., part 2, which contains the sepulchral inscriptions classifi ed according to arts and crafts, there is very little trace of the
free-born foreigner. Among the fi fty inscriptions of medici, for instance, only
two, 9563, 9597, contain sure instances of such foreigners. Among the grammatici, rhetores, argentarii, structores, andpictores, where they might well be
expected, I fi nd no clear case. It is evident then that the sweeping statements
of men like Juvenal and Seneca should not be made the basis for assuming a
considerable free-born immigration that permanently altered the citizen-body
of Rome. These writers apparently did not attempt to discriminate between
the various classes that were speaking foreign jargons on the streets of Rome.
As a matter of fact, this foreign-speaking population had, for the most part, it
seems, learned the languages they used within the city itself from slaves and
freedman parents of foreign birth.
If now this great crowd of the city was not of immigrant stock, but rather of
servile extraction, the family life of the slaves must have been far more conducive
to the propagation of that stock than is usually assumed, and, furthermore,
manumission must have been practiced so liberally that the slave-stock could
readily merge into the citizen-body. On the latter question our sources are
satisfactory; on the former, they have little to say. From Varro (II. i. 26 and x. 6)
and Columella (I. 8, 9) it has been well known that slaves on farms and pasturelands were expected to marry and have offspring. The Romans considered this
good economy, both because the stock of slaves increased thereby and because
the slaves themselves remained better satisfi ed with their condition. However,
partly because there exists no corresponding statement regarding slaves in the
city, partly because of a reckless remark made by Plutarch that Cato restricted
the cohabitation of his slaves, partly, too, because service in the city household
is supposed to have been very exacting, the prevalent opinion seems to be that
the marriage of slaves in the urban familia was unusual. Hence the statement is
frequently made that slavery died perforce when the pax Romana of the empire
put an end to capture by warfare.
Fortunately the columbaria of several Roman households provide a fairly
reliable record regarding the prevalence of marriage among city slaves. In CIL,
VI. 2, some 4,500 brief inscriptions are given, main1y from the rude funeral
urns of slaves and poor freedmen of the fi rst century of the empire. About
one-third of these are from the columbaria of the Livii, Drusi, Marcelli, Statilii,
and Volusii, aristocratic households where, presumably, service would be as
exacting as anywhere, discipline as strict, and concern for profi ts from the birth
of vernae as inconsiderable as anywhere. Furthermore, these inscriptions date
from a time when slaves were plentiful and the dearth of captives generally
assumed for a later day cannot be posited. Nevertheless, I believe that anyone
who will studiously compare the record of offspring in this group of inscriptions with that in ordinary plebeian inscriptions will reach the conclusion that
even in these households the slave doorkeepers and cooks and hairdressers
and scullery-maids customarily married and had children. The volume is full of interesting instances: Livia’s sarcinatrix married her mensor (VI. 3,988),
Octavia’s ornatrix was the wife of her keeper of the plate (5,539), Statilius’s
courier courted the spinning-maid of the household (6,342). In the lists of
husbands and wives one fi nds a chef (7,458), a vestiarius (9,963), a vestifi ca (5,206),
an unctor (6,381), a slave-maid serving as secretary a manu (9,540), the keeper
of my lady’s mirrors (7,297), of her handbag (7,368), of her wardrobe (4,043),
of her jewels (7,296), and what not. Now, these inscriptions are all extremely
brief. There are a great many like 4,478, Domitia Sex, l.Artemisia, Tertius, Viator,
where the word coniunx or contubernalis is probably, though not necessarily,
understood. Furthermore, the record of children is not as complete as it would
be in inscriptions of the better classes. A slave-child is, of course, not always
honored with a record of its brief existence. Moreover, slave families, not being
recognized in formal law, were sometimes broken up, so that some of the
names fail to appear with the rest of the family. Nevertheless, the proportion
of marriages and of offspring recorded by these very inscriptions, brief and
incomplete as they are, is remarkably large. In the thousands of inscriptions
of the columbaria of the Livii, Drusi, Marcelli, and the fi rst eighty of the Volusii
(to make the even 1,000) I fi nd,
151 inscriptions recording offspring.
99 additional inscriptions recording marriage.
152 additional inscriptions (like 4,478 quoted above) probably
recording marriage.
___
402
Now this is not, of course, as large a proportion as is found in the main
body of normal inscriptions. For comparison I give the proportions of 14,000
of volume VI., parts 2 and 3, reduced to the ratio of 1,000:
Per 1,000 Total
280 3,923 inscriptions recording offspring.
184 2,577 additional inscriptions recording marriage.
39 548 additional inscriptions probably recording
marriage.
____
503
Here, as we should expect, the proportion of children is larger, and the long
list of inscriptions bearing names of a man and a woman whose relationship
is not defi ned yields in favor of a record of conjuges. But, as has been said, the
slave inscriptions are far briefer and less complete than the others.
To discover whether the lower proportion in the fi rst list might be due to
the brevity of the inscriptions, I compared it with the list of 460 inscriptions of greater length, edited in volume VI., part 2, 8,639ff., as being ex familia Augusta.
These inscriptions are longer, to be sure, because the persons designated had
reached some degree of prosperity and could afford a few feet of sod with a
separate stone. But even these slaves and freedmen were generally required
to furnish close and persistent attention to their service. I have again given
the numbers in the proportion of 1,000 for the sake of comparison.
Per 1,000 Total
290 133 inscriptions recording offspring.
220 101 additional inscriptions recording marriage.
78 36 additional inscriptions probably recording
marriage.
____
588
From this list, if we may draw any conclusions from such small numbers,
it would appear that the imperial slaves and freedmen were more productive
than the ordinary citizens of Rome. And I see no reason for doubting that
the proportions in the households of the Livii, Drusi, etc., would be nearly as
large if the inscriptions were full lapidary ones, instead of the short notices
that were painted or cut upon the small space of an urn.
Finally, for the sake of getting a fuller record regarding the poorer classes,
I read 3,000 inscriptions of the miscellaneous columbaria that follow those of
the aristocratic households. These are nos. 4,881–7,881 of volume VI., part 2.
A very few of these inscriptions contain names of poor free-born citizens who
associated with—in fact were probably related to—slaves and ex-slaves, but
the proportion is so small that we may safely use this group for our present
purpose. Three thousand inscriptions from miscellaneous columbaria:
Per 1,000 Total
154 462 inscriptions recording offspring.
111 332 additional inscriptions recording marriage.
73 220 additional inscriptions probably
recording marriage.
____
338
This group, consisting of the very briefest inscriptions, set up by the poorest
of Rome’s menial slaves, shows, as we might expect, the smallest birth and
marriage rate. But when we compare it with that of the corresponding class
engaged in the aristocratic and imperial households, the ratios fall only in
proportion to the brevity and inadequacy of the record.
To sum up, then, it would seem that not only were the slaves of the
familia rustica permitted and encouraged to marry, as Varro and Columella
indicate, but—what the literary sources fail to tell—that slaves and freedmen
in the familia urbana did not differ from country slaves in this respect. And,
considering the poverty of those who raised these humble memorials, the
brevity of the records, and the ease with which members of such families
were separated, the ratio of offspring is strikingly large. We cannot be far
from wrong if we infer that the slaves and freedmen11 of the city were nearly
as prolifi c as the free-born population.
But however numerous the offspring of the servile class, unless the Romans
had been liberal in the practice of manumission, these people would not have
merged with the civil population. Now, literary and legal records present
abundant evidence of an unusual liberality in this practice at Rome, and the
facts need not be repeated after the full discussions of Wallon, Buckland,
Friedländer, Dill, Lemonnier, and Cicotti. If there were any doubt that the
laws passed in the early empire for the partial restriction of manumission did
not seriously check the practice, the statistics given at the beginning of the
paper would allay it. When from eighty to ninety percent of the urban-born
population proves to have been of servile extraction, we can only conclude
that manumission was not seriously restricted. I may add that a count of all the
slaves and freedmen in the familiae of the aristocratic households mentioned
above showed that almost a half were liberti. It is diffi cult to believe that this
proportion represents the usual practice, however, and, in fact, the fi gures
must be used with caution. On the one hand, they may be too high, for many
who served as slaves all their lives were manumitted only in old age, and it
must also be recognized that slaves were less apt to be recorded than liberti.
On the other hand, the fi gures may in some respects be too low, since there
can be little doubt that the designation liberti was at times omitted on the
simple urns, even though the subject had won his freedom. However, as far
as the inscriptions furnish defi nite evidence, they tell the same tale as the
writers of Rome, namely, that slaves were at all times emancipated in great
numbers.
When we consider whence these slaves came and of what stock they
actually were, we may derive some aid from an essay by Bang, Die Herkunft der
Römischen, Sklaven. Bang has collected all the inscriptions like Damas, natione
Syrus, and C. Ducenius C. lib. natus in Syria, which reveal the provenance
of slaves. Of course, the number of inscriptions giving such information is
relatively small, a few hundred in all. It should also be noticed that when a
slave gives his nationality he shows a certain pride in it, which, in some cases
at least, implies that he is not a normal slave of the mart, born in servitude,
but rather a man of free birth who may have come into the trade by capture,
abduction, or some other special way. However, with this word of caution we
may use Bang’s statistics for what they are worth.
A very large proportion in his list (seven-eighths of those dating in our era)
came from within the boundaries of the empire. From this we may possibly infer
that war-captives were comparatively rare during the empire, and that, though
abduction and kidnapping supplied some of the trade, the large bulk of the
slaves were actually reared from slave-parents. Doubtless slaves were reared
with a view to profi t in Greece and the Orient, as well as in Italy, and I see no
reason for supposing that the situation there differed much from that of our
Southern States where—for obvious economic reasons—the birth-rate of slaves
was higher between 1800 and 1860 than the birth-rate of their free descendants
has been since then. An examination of the names in Bang’s list with reference
to the provenance of the bearer will do something toward giving a criterion for
judging the source of Italian slaves not otherwise specifi ed. In a very few cases
a name appears which is not Greek or Latin but Semitic, Celtic, etc., according
to the birthplace of the slave, as, for instance, Malchio, Zizas, Belatusa. Such
names are rare and never cause any diffi culty. Somewhat more numerous, and
equally clear of interpretation, are the generic names that explicitly give the race
of the bearer, like Syrus, Cappadox, Gallus, etc. In general, however, slaves have
Greek or Latin names, and here diffi culties arise, for it has by no means been
certain whether or not these names had so distinctively servile a connotation that
they might be applied indiscriminately to captives from the North and West,
as well as to the slaves of Italy and the East. Nevertheless, there seems to be a
fairly uniform practice which differentiated between Greek and Latin names
during the empire. Slaves from Greece, from Syria, from Asia Minor, including
the province of Asia, Phrygia, Caria, Lycia, Pamphylia, Cappadocia, Bithynia,
Paphlagonia, Galatia—that is, from regions where Greek was the language of
commerce—regularly bore Greek, rather than Latin, names. Slaves from the
North—from Germany to Dacia—as a rule bore Latin names. Presumably their
own barbaric names were diffi cult to pronounce and Greek ones seemed inappropriate. Slaves from Spain and Gaul bore Latin and Greek names in about
equal numbers. But here we must apparently discriminate. These provinces
were old and commerce had brought into them many Oriental slaves from the
market. It may be that the Greek names were applied mostly to slaves of Eastern
extraction. This I should judge to be the case at least with the following: Ephesia
(Bang, p. 239), Corinthus, Hyginus, Phoebus (his father’s name is Greek), Eros
(a Sevir Aug.), and Philocyrius (p. 240, Hübner reads Philo, Cyprius). In general
we may apply these criteria in trying in some measure to decide the provenance
of slaves in Italy whose nativity is not specifi ed: bearers of Greek names are in
general from the East or descendants of Eastern slaves who have been in the
West; bearers of Latin names are partly captives of the North and West, partly,
as we have seen from our Roman lists, Easterners and descendants of Easterners
who have received Latin names from their masters.
Therefore, when the urban inscriptions show that seventy percent of the
city slaves and freedmen bear Greek names and that a large proportion of the children who have Latin names have parents of Greek names, this at once
implies that the East was the source of most of them, and with that inference
Bang’s conclusions entirely agree. In his list of slaves that specify their origin
as being outside of Italy (during the empire), by far the larger portion came
from the Orient, especially from Syria and the provinces of Asia Minor, with
some from Egypt and Africa (which for racial classifi cation may be taken with
the Orient). Some are from Spain and Gaul, but a considerable proportion of
these came originally from the East. Very few slaves are recorded from the
Alpine and Danube provinces, while Germans rarely appear, except among the
imperial bodyguard. Bang remarks that Europeans were of greater service to
the empire as soldiers than as servants. This is largely true, but, as Strack has
commented,12 the more robust European war-captives were apt to be chosen
for the grueling work in the mines and in industry, and consequently they
have largely vanished from the records. Such slaves were probably also the
least productive of the class; and this, in turn, helps to explain the strikingly
Oriental aspect of the new population.
Up to this point we have dealt mainly with the inscriptions of the city.
But they, of course, do not represent the state of affairs in the empire at large.
Unfortunately, it is diffi cult to secure large enough groups of sepulchral inscriptions for other cities and districts to yield reliable average on the points just
discussed. However, since the urban inscriptions have presented a general
point of view regarding the prolifi cness of slaves and the signifi cance of the
Greek cognomen, it will suffi ce to record the proportion of servile and Oriental
names found in some typical district outside of the city. The proportion of Greek
names to Latin among the slaves and liberti of the city was, in the inscriptions
I recorded, seventy percent versus thirty percent. This is of course very high.
In CIL, volume XIV. (Latium outside of Rome), the index of cognomina gives
571 to 315, that is, about sixty-four percent to thirty-six percent; volume IX.
(Calabria to Picenum), 810 to 714, i.e.,fi fty-three to forty-seven percent; volume
V. (Cisalpine Gaul), 701 to 831, i.e.,forty-six to fi fty-four percent. This, in fact,
is the only part of Italy where the majority of slaves and freedmen recorded
did not bear Greek names. As is to be expected, northern slaves, who generally
received Latin names, were probably found in larger numbers here; but again
it should not be forgotten that a great many of the Latin-named slaves were of
Eastern extraction.
In order to get more specifi c evidence regarding the nature of the population
in the West, free as well as servile, we may read the sepulchral inscriptions of
some typical towns13 and districts. I have listed them in four groups: (1) slaves
and freedmen bearing Latin names; (2) slaves and freedmen bearing Greek
names; (3) free-born citizens with Latin cognomen; (4) free-born citizens
with Greek cognomen. Under 3 and 4, I have, except when explicit evidence
proved the contrary, credited the tria nomina as indication of free birth; but
wish again to call attention to the caution contained in note 3. In cases of doubt the absence of the gentile name has been taken as an indication of
servile station if the name given is Greek or Latin and not Barbarian.
1 2 3 4 Sum
Marsi and Vestini, Italy.............. 201 119 234 58 612
Beneventum, Italy..................... 141 129 297 57 624
Milan and Patavium, North Italy.182 135 400 93 810
Narbo, Gaul...........................257 160 332 95 844
Gades, Corduba,
Hispalis, Emerita, Spain......... 129 101 305 90 625
______________________________________
910 644 1,568 393 3,515
When the indexes of CIL are nearer completionsuch details will be more
readily available and the tedious work of getting full statistics may be
undertaken with the hope of reaching some degree of fi nality. However,
the trend is evident in what we have given, and the fi gures are, I think,
fairly representative of the whole. In these towns, as at Rome, the proportion of non-Latin folk is strikingly large. Slaves, freedmen, and citizens of
Greek name make up more than half the population, despite the fact that
in the nature of the case these are presumably the people leastlikely to be
adequately represented in inscriptions. Furthermore, if the Latin names
of freedmen in half the instances conceal persons of Oriental parentage,
as they do in the city, the Easterner would be represented by classes 2
and 4, half of class 1, and a part of class 3. How strikingly un-Latin these
places must have appeared to those who saw the great crowd of humble
slaves, who were buried without ceremony or record in nameless trenches!
Yet here are the Marsi, proverbially the hardiest native stock of the Italian
mountains; Beneventum, one of Rome’s old frontier colonies; Milan and
Padua, that drew Latins and Romanized Celts from the richest agricultural
districts of the Po valley; the old colony of Narbo, the home of Caesar’s
famous Tenth Legion—the city that Cicero called specula populi Romani; and
four cities at the western end of the empire. If we may, as I think fair, infer
for these towns what we found to be true at Rome, namely, that slaves
were quite as prolifi c as the civil population, that they merged into the
latter, and that Greek names betokened Oriental stock, it is evident that
the wholeempire was a melting-pot and that the Oriental was always and
everywhere a very large part of the ore.
There are other questions that enter into the problem of change of race at
Rome, for the solution of which it is even more diffi cult to obtain statistics. For
instance, one asks, without hope of a suffi cient answer, why the native stock
did not better hold its own. Yet there are at hand not a few reasons. We know for instance that when Italy had been devastated by Hannibal and a large part
of its population put to the sword, immense bodies of slaves were bought
up in the East to fi ll the void; and that during the second century, when the
plantation system with its slave service was coming into vogue, the natives
were pushed out of the small farms and many disappeared to the provinces
of the ever-expanding empire. Thus, during the thirty years before Tiberius
Gracchus, the census statistics show no increase. During the fi rst century B.C.,
the importation of captives and slaves continued, while the free-born citizens
were being wasted in the social, Sullan, and civil wars. Augustus affi rms that he
had had half a million citizens under arms, one-eighth of Rome’s citizens, and
that the most vigorous part. During the early empire, twenty to thirty legions,
drawn of course from the best free stock, spent their twenty years of vigor in
garrison duty, while the slaves, exempt from such services, lived at home and
increased in number. In other words, the native stock was supported by less
than a normal birth-rate, whereas the stock of foreign extraction had not only
a fairly normal birth-rate but a liberal quota of manumissions to its advantage.
Various other factors, more diffi cult to estimate, enter into the problem of the
gradual attrition of the native stock. It seems clear, for instance, that the old
Indo-Germanic custom of “exposing” children never quite disappeared from
Rome. Law early restrained the practice and in the empire it was not permitted
to expose normal males, and at least the fi rst female must be reared. It is impossible, however, to form any clear judgment from the literary sources as to the
extent of this practice during the empire. I thought that a count of the offspring
in a large number of inscriptions might throw light upon the question, and
found that of the 5,063 children noted in the 19,000 inscriptions read, 3,155, or
about 62.3 percent, were males. Perhaps this refl ects the operation of the law
in question, and shows that the expositio of females was actually practiced to
some extent. But here too we must remember that the evidence is, by its very
nature, of little worth. Boys naturally had a better chance than girls to gain
some little distinction and were therefore more apt to leave a sepulchral record.
At any rate, if expositio was practiced, the inscriptions show little difference in
this respect between the children of slaves and freedmen and the children of
the ordinary city populace.14
But the existence of other forms of “race suicide,” so freely gossiped about
by writers of the empire, also enters into this question; and here the inscriptions
quite fail us. The importance of this consideration must, nevertheless, be kept
in mind. Doubtless, as Fustel de Coulanges (La Cité Antique) Antique) has remarked, it
could have been of little importance in the society of the republic so long as
the old orthodox faith in ancestral spirits survived, for the happiness of the
manes depended upon the survival of the family, and this religious incentive
probably played the same role in the propagation of the race as the Mosaic
injunctions among the Hebrews, which so impressed Tacitus in a more degenerate day of Rome. But religious considerations and customs—which in this matter emanate from the fundamental instincts that continue the race—were
questioned as all else was questioned before Augustus’s day. Then the process
of diminution began. The signifi cance of this whole question lies in the fact that
“race suicide” then, as now, curtailed the stock of the more sophisticated, that
is, of the aristocracy and the rich, who were, to a large extent, the native stock.
Juvenal, satirist though he is, may be giving a fact of some social importance
when he writes that the poor bore all the burdens of family life, while the rich
remained childless:
jacet aurato vix ulla puerpera lecto;
Tantum artes hujus, tantum medicamina possunt,
Quae steriles facit.15
There may lie here—rare phenomenon—an historic parallel of some
meaning. The race of the human animal survives by means of instincts
that shaped themselves for that purpose long before rational control came
into play. Before our day it has only been at Greece and Rome that these
impulses have had to face the obstacle of sophistication. There at least the
instinct was beaten, and the race went under. The legislation of Augustus
and his successors, while aimed at preserving the native stock, was of the
myopic kind so usual in social law-making, and, failing to reckon with
the real nature of the problem involved, it utterly missed the mark. By
combining epigraphical and literary references, a fairly full history of
the noble families can be procured, and this reveals a startling inability
of such families to perpetuate themselves. We know, for instance, in
Caesar’s day of forty-fi ve patricians, only one of whom is represented
by posterity when Hadrian came to power.16 The Aemilii, Fabii, Claudii,
Manlii, Valerii, and all the rest, with the exception of the Cornelii, have
disappeared. Augustus and Claudius raised twenty-fi ve families to the
patriciate, and all but six of them disappear before Nerva’s reign. Of
the families of nearly four hundred senators recorded in 65 A.D. under
Nero, all trace of a half is lost by Nerva’s day, a generation later. And
the records are so full that these statistics may be assumed to represent
with a fair degree of accuracy the disappearance of the male stock of
the families in question. Of course members of the aristocracy were the
chief sufferers from the tyranny of the century, but this havoc was not
all wrought by delatores and assassins. The voluntary choice of childlessness accounts largely for the unparalleled condition. This is as far as the
records help upon this problem, which, despite the silence, is probably
the most important phase of the whole question of the change of race.
Be the causes what they may, the rapid decrease of the old aristocracy
and the native stock was clearly concomitant with a twofold increase
from below: by a more normal birth-rate of the poor, and the constant
manumission of slaves.
This Orientalizing of Rome’s populace has a more important bearing
than is usually accorded it upon the larger question of why the spirit and
acts of imperial Rome are totally different from those of the republic, if
indeed racial characteristics are not wholly a myth. There is today a healthy
activity in the study of the economic factors—unscientifi c fi nance, fi scal
agriculture, inadequate support of industry and commerce, etc.—that
contributed to Rome’s decline. But what lay behind and constantly reacted
upon all such causes of Rome’s disintegration was, after all, to a considerable extent, the fact that the people who built Rome had given way to a
different race. The lack of energy and enterprise, the failure of foresight
and commonsense, the weakening of moral and political stamina, all were
concomitant with the gradual diminution of the stock which, during the
earlier days, had displayed these qualities. It would be wholly unfair to
pass judgment upon the native qualities of the Orientals without a further
study, or to accept the self-complacent slurs of the Romans, who, ignoring
certain imaginative and artistic qualities, chose only to see in them unprincipled and servile egoists. We may even admit that had the new races had
time to amalgamate and attain a political consciousness, a more brilliant
and versatile civilization might have come to birth. That, however, is not
the question. It is apparent that at least the political and moral qualities which
counted most in the building of the Italian federation, the army organization,
the provincial administrative system of the republic, were the qualities most
needed in holding the empire together. And however brilliant the endowment
of the new citizens, these qualities they lacked. The Trimalchios of the empire
were often shrewd and daring businessmen, but their fi rst and obvious task
apparently was to climb by the ladder of quick profi ts to a social position in
which their children with Romanized names could comfortably proceed to
forget their forebears. The possession of wealth did not, as in the republic,
suggest certain duties toward the commonwealth. Narcissus and Pallas might
besagacious politicians, but they were not expected to be statesmen concerned
with the continuity of the mos majorum. And when, on reading Tacitus, we are
amazed at the new servility of Scipios and Messalas, we must recall that these
scattered inheritors of the old aristocratic ideals had at their back only an alien
rabble of ex-slaves, to whom they would have appealed in vain for a return to
ancestral ideas of law and order. They had little choice between servility and
suicide, and not a few chose the latter.
It would be illuminating by way of illustration of this change to study the
spread of the mystery religions. Cumont seems to think that these cults won
many converts among all classes in the West. Toutain, skeptical on this point,
assigns not a little of the new religious activity to the rather formal infl uence of
the court at Rome. Dobschütz, a more orthodox churchman, seems to see in the
spread of these cults the pervasion of a new and deeper religious spirit, which,
in some mystical way, was preparing the old world for Christianity. But is not the success of the cults in great measure an expression of the religious feelings
of the new people themselves? And if it is, may it not be that Occidentals who
are actually of Oriental extraction, men of more emotional nature, are simply
fi nding in these cults the satisfaction that, after long deprivation, their temperaments naturally required? When a senator, dignifi ed by the name of M. Aurelius
Victor, is found among the votaries of Mithras in the later empire, it may well
be that he is the great-grandson of some child kidnapped in Parthia and sold
on the block at Rome. Toutain has proved, I think, that in the northern and
western provinces the only Oriental cult that took root at all among the real
natives was that of Magna Mater, and this goddess, whose cult was directed
by the urban priestly board, had had the advantage of centuries of a rather
accidental recognition by the Roman state. In the western provinces, the Syrian
and Egyptian gods were worshipped chiefl y by people who seem not to be
native to the soil. The Mithraic worshippers in these provinces were, for the
most part, soldiers recruited or formerly stationed in the East, and Orientals
who, by way of commerce or the slave-market, had come to live in the West.
From the centers where such people lived the cult spread but very slowly.
It would hardly be worth while to attempt any conclusion for the city
of Rome, since, as we have seen, the whole stock there had so changed that
fair comparisons would be well-nigh unattainable; but the Po valley,
that is Cisalpine Gaul, which preserved its Occidental aspect better than
any other part of Italy, might yield usable data. For this region nearly
one hundred devotees of Oriental gods are recorded in the fi fth volume
of CIL, and, as soldiers and Roman offi cers are not numerous there,
the worshippers may be assumed to represent a normal average for the
community. Among them I fi nd only twelve who are actually recorded
as slaves or freedmen, but upon examination of the names, more than
four-fi fths seem, after all, to belong to foreign stock. Nearly half have
Greek names. Several are seviri Augustales, and, therefore, probably liberti;
and names like Publicius, Verna, Veronius (at Verona), tell the same tale.
Finally, there are several imperial gentile names—Claudius, Flavius,
Ulpius, Actius, etc.—which, when found among such people, suggest that the
Roman nomenclature is a recent acquisition. There is a residue of only some
twelve names the antecedents of which remain undefi ned. This seems to me
to be a fairly typical situation, and not without signifi cance. In short, the
mystery cults permeated the city, Italy, and the western provinces only to
such an extent as the city and Italy and the provinces were permeated by
the stock that had created those religions.
At Rome, Magna Mater was introduced for political reasons during
the Punic War, when the city was still Italian. The rites proved to be
shocking to the unemotional westerner, who worshipped the staid patrician
called Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and were locked in behind a wall. As
the urban populace began to change, however, new rites clamored for admittance, for, as a senator in Nero’s days says,17 “Nationes in familiis
habemus, quibus diversi ritus, externa sacra.” And as the populace enforced
their demands upon the emperor for panem et circenses, so they also secured
recognition for their externa sacra. One after another of the emperors gained
popularity with the rabble by erecting a shrine to some foreign Baal, or a
statue to Isis in his chapel, in much the same way that our cities are lining
their park drives with tributes to Garibaldi, Pulaski, and who knows what
-vitch. Finally, in the third and fourth centuries, when even the aristocracy at
Rome was almost completely foreign, these Eastern cults, rather than those
of old Rome, became the centers of “patrician” opposition to Christianity. In
other words, the western invasion of the mystery cults is hardly a miraculous
conversion of the even-tempered, practical-minded Indo-European to an
orgiastic emotionalism, foreign to his nature. These religions came with
their peoples, and in so far as they gained new converts, they attracted for
the most part people of Oriental extraction who had temporarily fallen
away from native ways in the western world. Christianity, which contained
enough Oriental mysticism to appeal to the vast herd of Easterners in the
West, and enough Hellenic sanity to captivate the rationalistic Westerner,
found, even if one reckons only with social forces, the most congenial soil
for growth in the conglomeration of Europeans, Asiatics, and Africans that
fi lled the western Roman Empire in the second century.
This is but one illustration. But it is offered in the hope that a more
thorough study of the race question may be made in conjunction with
economic and political questions before any attempt is made fi nally to
estimate the factors at work in the change of temper of imperial Rome.
ENDNOTES
1. CIL, vol. VI., parts 2, 3, 4.
2. Vol. VI., part 4, published in 1902, contains 2,512 additional inscriptions of this
class.
3. In epigraphical discussions one constantly meets with the statement that freedmen
were compelled to indicate their status by the designation lib. or l. and that therefore
the occurrence of the tria nomina without such designation is proof of free birth.
Unfortunate1y, this rule, if indeed it was one, was so fre quently broken, that it must be
employed with caution. There are hundreds of obvious exceptions where tria nomina
of respectable appearance impose upon the reader until at the end of the inscription
the dedicant’s designation of patronus or contubernalis or conlibertus betrays the real
status, e. g.,VI. 7,849, 14,550, 16,203, 17,562, 20,675, 20,682, 22,299, 22,606, 23,927, 23,989.
Again, numerous bearers of faultless tria nomina fall under strong presumption of being
freedmen because of some offi cial title like sevir or because their sons prove to being
to one of the city tribes; cf. X. 690, 4,620, 6,677; VI. 12,431, 14,045, 20,079. Finally, there
are many instances like 14,018. Here a man gives the name of a large family (all with
tria nomina) including children and a grandchild, but only the youngest, Caesonia M.
F. Prima, a child of seven months, bears the F which defi nitely indicates free birth.
Apparently the other members of the family were not entitled to the designation.
Compare also 20,123, 20,339, 23,813. Since in cases of doubt I have been compelled to
credit bearers of Latin tria nomina to the native stock, it will appear that this group has
more than received full credit in the accompanying lists.
4. There are not enough datable inscriptions available to show whether the Greek
cognomen gained or lost respectability with time. Obviously it may in general be
assumed that most of the freedmen who bore the gentile name of Aelius and Aurelius
belong to a later date than the general group of those named Julius and Claudius.
If we may use this fact as a criterion we may decide that there was little difference
between the fi rst and the second century in this matter, since the proportion of Greek
cognomina is about the same in the two groups.
5. It is diffi cult to secure usable statistics in the case of women, since their cognomina
may come from almost any relative or near friend. However, an examination of the
indexes of names will show that the Greek cognomen was relatively no more popular
among the women than among the men.
6. Ad Helviam, 6.
7. Petronius, 57.
8. This criterion fails of course after citizenship was given to the provincials in the
third century, but when Rome’s population was decreasing there probably was not
a heavy immigration.
9. De Opifi cum Romanorum Condicione (1910).
10. Die Nationalität der Kaufl eute im Römischen Kaiserreich (1909).
11. We cannot suppose that most of the children belong to the period subsequent to
the liberation of the parents. Very many of the liberati recorded were emancipated in
old age, and throughout the empire manumission of slaves under 30 years of age was
discouraged (Buckland, Roman Law of Slavery, p. 542). In a large number of instances
the form and contents of the inscriptions show that slave-fathers after emancipation
paid the price for children and wife.
12. Historische Zeitschrift, CXII. 9.
13. In this list I have omitted imperial offi cials and soldiers, since they are not likely
to be natives of the place.
14. I have compared the respective ratios of the girls and boys of the Julii and
the Claudii with those of the Aelii and the Aurelii (who would in general date about a
century later) but found no appreciable difference in the percentage. A chronological
test seems to be unattainable.
15. VI. 594–596.
16. Stech, in Klio, Beiheft X., Am. Hist. Rev., vol. XXI.: 46.
17. Tacitus, Annales, XIV. 44.
