Others interpret the passage to mean that originally the name ingenuus did not exist and that the word patricius was sufficient to indicate a Roman citizen by birth.
But the word ingenuus was introduced, in the sense here stated, at a later time for the purpose of indicating a citizen by birth specifically.
Thus, in the speech of Appius Claudius Crassus,[9] he contrasts with persons of patrician descent, "Unus Quiritium quilibet, duobus ingenuis ortus."
Under the Roman Empire, ingenuitas, or the Jura Ingenuitatis, might be acquired by imperial favor; that is, a person not ingenuus by birth could be made so by the sovereign power.
[12] The natalibus restitutio was a decree in which the princeps gave to a libertinus the rights and status of ingenuus;[13] it was a form of proceeding that involved the theory of the original freedom of all mankind, for the libertinus was restored not to the state in which he had been born but to his supposed original state of freedom.