Note 53 — Chapter III · GREEK AND ROMAN CONCEPTS OF RACE

The secretary of Appius Caecus was a certain Gnaeus Flavius, grandson of a slave, who became not merely curule aedile, but one of the founders of Roman jurisprudence. (Livy, IX. xlvi.). Likewise the Gabinius that proposed the Lex Tabellaria of 139 B.C.E. was the son or grandson of a slave, vernae natus or nepos. (Cf. the newly discovered fragment of Livy’s Epitome, Oxyr. Pap. iv. 101 f.) The general statement is made by the emperor Claudius (Tac. Ann. xi. 24), in a passage unfortunately absent in the fragments of the actual speech discovered at Lyons.