ingenui

Ingenui (singular ingenuus or feminine ingenua) was a legal description of persons who were born free in ancient Rome, as distinguished from free people who had once been slaves (liberti or libertae). Ingenuitas was the abstract noun for this status.

Free men were either ingenui or libertini. Ingenui indicated free men who were born free. Libertini were men who were manumitted from legal slavery. Although freedmen were not ingenui, the sons of libertini were ingenui. A libertinus could not by adoption become ingenuus. If a female slave (ancilla) was pregnant and was manumitted before she gave birth to the child, that child was born free and therefore was ingenuus. In other cases, also, the law favored the claim of free birth and consequently of ingenuitas. If a man's ingenuitas was a matter in dispute, the dispute could be heard by a judicium ingenuitatis, a court to determine status with regard to patronal rights.