Theresa May has brought her own advisers with her into No. 10, and as usual the knives are out for them: they are parasites, and what are the civil service and the cabinet for anyway? Romans had the same trouble with freedmen.
A ‘freedman’ (libertus or libertinus) was someone who had been a slave but been freed by his master. The emperor had hundreds of such slaves at his service, many with valuable skills, and any who were freed could be invited to retain their position in the imperial entourage, a duty they had to fulfil if their master asked them.
While such a man was a slave, whatever his position, he was a non-person. But once freed, he became a citizen (though not a full one) and that was a very different kettle of fish.
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