Children of Roman Men and Female Slaves

On the other hand, there's Roman tomb that has a fairly lengthy inscription about those buried in it and two of them were a Roman woman and a former slave who she'd freed and married, so things were evidently a bit more flexible in that area then you'd think.

IMO, that sounds rather exceptional. It would almost be akin to saying that since Queen Victoria was the wealthiest individual with the largest amount of land owned in Great Britain, all British married women in the Victorian Era could become wealthy landowners.
However I do believe that there were cases in which the offspring of Roman citizens' wives and their male slaves were passed off as the male Roman citizens' own progeny that never made the written 'radar'. While a good deal of that may have happened due to simple deceptions on the actual parents' parts, in some cases, this may have happened with the consent or even encouragement of the male Roman citizens themselves who may have been motivated to use their wives' offspring to disguise their own sterility and to pass the properties to them rather than detested actual family junior members.
 
Absolutely. As a senator, you had made it in life. But kind of like being a 'one percenter' or a 'political leader' today, there's a big difference between being Prime Minister of Timor Leste and President of China.

Yeah. And this seems like an area where (lack of) dignitas will undermine your chances at auctoritas , cementing that status.

Not by some formal rule - but if you're regarded as at best an upstart, that's not a good way to get important offices.

THe senators were basically pushed out of political responsibility, first the formal organ of the senate, then increasingly the group it recruited from. In the end, most senators were landloreds who came to Rome rarely if ever and mainly competed for sinecures if they were in politics at all. Real power was exercised through the army and civil service.

And the latter seems to have avoided drawing on that part of the population (at least more than it had to).

Late Rome (including Byzantium) seems to have had a peculiar sort of meritocracy in that regard. Not class-blind, but being close to the Emperor and/or extremely talented could prove more useful than merely being well born.
 
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