I. Ordinary manumissions
A. Greek type
1. religious/sacral
a. by consecration to a divinity
b. by sale to a divinity
c. with protection by a divinity
1. invocation of a god for the protection of the freedman
2. civic-religious mode
2. civic
a. by individual act
b. in a civic list of manumissions
c. through announcement by a herald
d. by testament
B. Greco-Roman type
1. public acts
2. private acts
II. Extraordinary manumissions
A. in war
B. by decree
(Translated from the Italian by D. Kamen (2005 : xxi))
What is of course particularly interesting is how Calderini separates Greco-Roman manumission from Greek manumission. I can only think how this is in part influenced by the 19th century’s valorization of the Greeks above the Romans (and many other peoples beside).
Scholars being scholars, these categories have been challenged. Some attempt to make more categories, while others, such as Zelnick-Abramovitz, basically questions the whole schema. In part this is because Zelnick-Abramovitz is more concerned with dividing manumission into public or private acts.
For the most part, I appreciate this dismissal of the categories. Each case of manumission was a strategy that was a result of the needs of both the master and slave, needs that sometimes conflicted. While these masters and slaves would frame and justify these actions by using laws, rituals and language that would give this occasion ceremony, ultimately these are ancillary choices to the central grant of freedom.
At the opening of his chapter on manumission, Patterson says: “What was manumission, and how was it to be achieved? Unsuspected problems of extraordinary complexity arise when one tries to answer these apparently simple questions.”