father had been a slave: Despite Tacitus' statement that "many senators" descended from servile origin, Larcius Macedo is the only person for whom this is unambiguously the case. Quintus Curtius Rufus ( Ep. 7.27.2 Click here) was said to have been the son of a gladiator, though that may not be true, and the ancestor of the emperor Vitellius (Suet. Vit. 2) is said to have been a freedman, which may be a slander. Freed slaves and their children were ordinarily barred from holding public office (click here). There was, however, a legal fiction by which the stigma of servile birth could be removed. This was the so-called natalium restitutio (restoration of birth)(click here for the evidence ). One of the most notable cases of a freedman obtaining rights ordinarily held only by the freeborn involved Antonius Pallas, who obtained enormous influence in the reign of Claudius. Negative comments by both Pliny and Tacitus upon the award of praetorian honors to Pallas serve to underline the tension between legal possibilities and social attitudes ( click here for for Plin. Ep. 7.29; here for Plin. Ep. 8.6 and here for Tacitus, Annals 12.53.