Enfranchisement was encouraged by another consideration. The Roman law, determined by a very ancient patriarchal system, was apparently very rigid as to the extent of the master’s _dominium_. The slave was, in law and logic, a sentient chattel indistinguishable from ox and ass. But in other respects the Roman law was extraordinarily liberal. For practical purposes the slave could and did acquire property, the so-called _peculium_, and could and did use it to purchase his freedom. Further, the newly-made freeman became a full citizen, a _civis Romanus_. His name was enrolled in the census books; he possessed full suffrage, and lacked only the _ius honorum_, the right of holding office. Even this, however, his children acquired. Sons of slaves who held magistracies are frequent enough to furnish some notable examples; _e.g._ Cn. Flavius, the secretary to Appius Claudius; P. Gabinius, the proposer of the Lex Tabellaria of 139 B.C.E.[234] It is for this reason that indications of servile origin have been found in names nothing less than illustrious in Roman history.[235] With this steady influx of dispossessed peasants and enfranchised Greek and Asiatic slaves, the urban population was a sufficiently unaccountable quantity; and in this motley horde, constantly stirred to riot by the political upheavals, which quickly followed each other from the Gracchan period onward, all manner of strange and picturesque foreigners lived and worked. To the Roman of cultivation they were sometimes interesting, more often repellent, especially if he found himself compelled to reckon with them seriously on the basis of a common citizenship. Even for foreigners Roman citizenship was not very difficult to acquire, and was, as we have seen, obtained with especial facility through slavery. The emancipated slave was as such a _civis Romanus_. His son had even the _ius honorum_; he might be a candidate for the magistracy. This process had been accelerated after the Social War, which admitted an enormous and quite unmanageable number into citizenship. The popular leaders were especially lavish, and no doubt many ward politicians took it upon themselves to dispense with the formalities when a few votes were needed.