English: "Marble relief with portraits of the freedmen Publius Licinius Philonicus and Publius Licinius Demetrius. On the left are the rods and axes used in the ceremony of freeing a slave. In the pediment are the tools of a blacksmith, on the right the tools of a carpenter, and on the left the insignia of a lictor". - British Museum. Possibly these slaves were skilled craftsmen who purchased their freedom.

Portraits of this kind were called libertini, and were typical of the Roman Republican and Augustinian eras. They were intended to commemorate the setting at liberty of slaves, and were paid for by the ex-slaves themselves. Since slaves lacked a family, this was the nearest they could get to commemorating their new legitimacy. "The sculptures seem to have responded to a special social need of freedmen and freedwomen. Slaves were removed from their natural families and grafted into the familia of their owner by enslavement, so that freedmen were not allowed to name their parents on their epitaphs, but only their patrons. Kleiner views the portraits as substitutes for ancestor portraits by which freedmen and women celebrate the legitimacy of the new family created when they were freed". (D'Angelo, Women Partners in the New Testament. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Spring, 1990, Vol. 6(1), p.68).

The inscriptions always commemorate the slave's owner, to whom the freedpersons continued to owe an obligation of respect called obseqium et officium. In reality, however, the slaves were frequently made to pay handsomely for their freedom. It is possible that the respectful commemoration was part of the bargain.