ingenui, ingenuitas

In Roman law, ingenui are those persons sprung from free parents. The word is therefore opposed in meaning to libertini, which denoted those who were only themselves free. At one time those only whose parents were freeborn were styled ingenui, but by the time of Justinian any child born of a free mother was ingenuus. See Mommsen, Röm. Staatsr. iii. pp. 72 foll., 518, 519; ii. 2, p. 518; and the article libertinus.