Funerary inscriptions in Pompeii. A study of Pompeian freed slaves

Abstract: Due to a German research project on slavery in antiquity, I became aware of the fact, that within the field of slavery and manumission a lot of research still needs to be done. 1 A university course on social identity inspired me later on and made me think about different identities; ‘being a slave’ was one of them. The habit of freeing slaves was so widely spread during the late Roman Republic and the early Empire, that Emperor Augustus even introduced a law in order to restrict the numbers of manumission. 2 But what do we know about people that changed their identity in the middle or at the end of their lives? What do we know about the persons that suddenly became free individuals, free persons? The archaeological evidence concerning freedmen is abundant. Therefore I decided to choose for this thesis a topic that combines questions of identity and research on freedmen. Another important factor was the wish to contribute something to the current research within this field and not only to review already known facts.