ABSTRACT

In 44 BC the huge sprawling city of Rome was filled with a population of heterogeneous origin. The city had grown rapidly from c. 200 BC, as the presence of wealth imported by conquest attracted peasants from the countryside hopeful for a better income than the limited profits of a small farm could ever permit, and the import of slaves as domestic and skilled craft labour swelled the ranks of citizens on their release from servitude. A good proportion of the Roman plebs was probably descended from slaves, and this proportion is likely to have increased over time, although precise ratios cannot be known. The ethnic origins of such freedmen ranged from Germany to Syria, but it may be assumed that their descendants intermarried, since no record survives of definable ethnic groups within the city plebs apart from those communities, like the Jews, who maintained distinctive religious practices which enjoined endogamy.1