ABSTRACT

Successful Roman warfare in the second century resulted in the acquisition of hundreds of thousands of war captives who were sold into slavery. One difficult social problem associated with Roman slavery was the incorporation and integration of freedmen, including captives from war, into the citizen body after manumission. The mytho-historical tales of Rome’s “founding fathers,” which were in wide circulation by the late Republic, offer insight into how the Romans tried to integrate large numbers of former slaves, in many cases former enemies, into the citizenry. An examination of the legend of Servius, supposedly born to a captive woman yet ultimately one of Rome’s most consequential kings, reveals a serious tension in Roman attitudes toward new citizens who had once been enemies and slaves, as the accounts reveal both a surprising willingness to admit newcomers and a determination to impose social boundaries on them. The variant versions of the Servius legend reflect debates that the Romans of the late republican era were having, as war and conquest brought changes to their understanding of what it meant to be a Roman.