INGENUUS
INGENUUS Ingenuus, like most Roman terms signifying a personal
status, has had a history of its own. Its meaning is only distinctly
expressed for us in the later developments of Roman law; but we have strong
reasons for believing that the meaning there given was not the earliest it
bore. If we presume that the term originated when the community of Roman
citizens was a purely patrician community, and was applied to members of
this community, it would have signified, as Ortolan expresses it, “one
who was born in a gens, one who had a genealogy, one who could show a
line of descent free to its fountain source from every taint of
vassalage” (Ortolan, p. 27, E. T.). This conjecture, it is true,
receives no confirmation from the passages (
Liv.
10.8; Cincius, ap. Fest. p. 241) quoted to support it, which have, as
will be shown, a wholly different bearing; but, if the word found a place in
the nomenclature of the Roman patrician community, it could have signified
no more and no less than
gentilis, only
emphasising that side of gentilitas which insists on a perfectly pure
descent as a necessary qualification for the status. Later, however, with
the growth of plebeian privileges, ingenuus came to be used as denoting a
distinction within the plebeian community. Free men (
liberi) are divided into
ingenui
and
libertini (Gaius, 1.10). Such a distinction
could only have been of importance within a circle in which the taint of
vassalage was found; that is, not in the patrician community, which of
necessity excluded this taint, but only within the plebeian. (
Liv. 6.40, “nec ex patricio sanguine ortus,
sed unus Quiritium quilibet, qui modo me duobus ingenuis ortum
sciam.” )
Ingenuus will now be defined
by the definition of
libertines: and the stages of
meaning which this latter word passed through will necessitate different
stages of meaning in the word
ingenuus in this
second period of its history. The term
libertini, we are told, was originally used to cover, not merely
manumitted slaves, but their descendants in the first degree (
Suet. Cl. 24). It was employed, therefore, to
signify one who was born of free, but not of freeborn parents. Ingenuitas
denoted the opposite status to that of a libertinus, and ingenuus must
therefore at this time have denoted one who was sprung from freeborn
parents. The sons of libertini were subsequently placed on an equality with
the other Roman burgesses, and were from this time onwards ingenui. During
the period, therefore, in which we can with some degree of certainty trace
the history of this word, ingenuus first denoted one who had free ancestors
in the second degree, and freeborn ancestors in the first degree; later it
denoted one who had free ancestors in the first degree. In this later sense,
the sense in which it is found defined in the Institutes, it denotes one who
is “born in a state of freedom,”
“qui statim ut nascitur liber est” (Just.
Inst.
1.4): and this is the sense in which it is said by Livy and by Cincius to be
equivalent to the original meaning of patricius. The statements,
“patricios eos appellari solitos, qui nunc ingenui
vocantur” (Cincius ap. Fest. p. 241), and “patricios primo esse
factos, qui patrem ciere possent, id est nihil ultra quam
ingenuos” (
Liv. 10.8,
10), are simply statements of a theory which is probably
correct, that the word
patricii originally
denoted the sole free citizens of Rome. It may be remarked that the word
ingenuus, although it always signified
“born in a state of freedom,” did not necessarily signify
“born in the possession of citizen rights.” The citizen who
is made a citizen is yet an
ingenuus, provided
he be a freeborn man; throughout its history, as applied to the mixed
plebeian community, the word has libertini as its main antithesis. There is
only one reason that would make us regard libertinus as not having been
always the sole antithesis of ingenuus. For it is probable that, in the
early period, one born out of due wedlock was not an ingenuus, a restriction
which was removed in the course of the development of Roman law (Gaius,
1.11; Marcianus, “nec interest justis nuptiis conceperit an
vulgo” ). But there is nothing to show that children born out of
wedlock, though perhaps originally not ingenui, were ever called libertini.
At the time of Justinian all that was necessary to constitute
ingenuitas in the child was that it should be the
son of a free mother. It was ingenuus whether it was conceived or born while
the mother was in a state of freedom, the status of the father not being
taken into consideration, and the condition of marriage not being required
(Just.
Inst. 1.4). Ingenuitas was on the whole a gift of
birth, and a libertinus could not by adoption become ingenuus (
Gel. 5.19). But under the empire
ingenuitas or the
Jura
ingenuitatis might be acquired by the favour of the princeps. It
could be acquired in two ways, indirectly by the gift of the gold ring
(
jus aureorum anulorum), or directly by the
natalibus restitutio. The gold ring had
long been the mark of equestrian rank, and the conferring of the gold ring
on a libertinus carried with it, in the early principate, not merely
ingenuitas, but admission to the equestrian order. At the time when this
symbol raised a libertinus to the rank of knighthood it
[p. 1.1010]was sparingly employed, generally for the purpose of raising
the position of the freedmen of the emperor's household (Mommsen,
Staatsr. iii. p. 519, n. 1); and the gift, when it
carried these consequences with it, must have asserted the fullest
ingenuitas, involving a dissolution of all the rights of the patronus. From
the time of Commodus, however, the gift of the gold ring ceased to denote
admission to the equestrian order (Mommsen,
Staatsr. ii. p.
893), and became merely a means for the conferring of a partial ingenuitas.
It merely granted the enjoyment of the rights implied in ingenuitas during
the lifetime of its possessor, and did not destroy the patronal rights
(
Dig. 38,
2,
3, “hic enim vivit quasi ingenuus, moritur quasi
libertus” ). The other mode of conferring ingenuitas was by the
direct method of the
natalibus restitutio; this
was considered by a legal fiction to be a restoration to one of the
primitive rights of man, the right of being born in a state of freedom
(
Dig. 40,
11,
2, “in quibus initio omnes homines fuerunt, non
in quibus ipse nascitur, cum servus natus esset” ). When such a
restitutio was granted to a libertinus, the patronal rights were lost: and
consequently the patron was usually consulted, and his consent obtained,
before the change was made (Dig.
l.c.). The
possession of ingenuitas was sometimes a matter of dispute, and we find the
mention of a
Judicium ingenuitatis for the
decision of this question (
Tac. Ann.
13.27). (Mommsen,
Römisches Staatsrecht, iii.
p. 72
sq., pp. 518, 519; 2.2, p. 518.)
[
A.H.G]
