Slavery in Rome was a bit different from Atlantic slavery. It was not so much that a certain class of people was singled out based on race, nationality, etc as designated slaves. Rather, slaves usually came from the ranks of free society. People who committed crimes and prisoners of war were commonly punished with slavery. Because society didn’t view slaves as inherently different from the free population—they didn’t, for example, think that slaves were a different breed of human, a belief common in nineteenth century United States—slaves had more social mobility. This meant that enslaved people were not condemned to be a slave for the rest of their life. Enslaved people would have seen regaining freedom as more of a possibility than, say, an eighteenth century Jamaican slave. In addition, free society tended to treat slaves more benevolently than it’s Atlantic counterpart did. This certainly doesn’t mean that Roman slaves were treated as equals but, because there wasn’t a widespread belief in the fundamental inferiority if enslaved people, there wasn’t as much of a social impetus to maintain this hierarchy through violence toward the enslaved. Taking all of this into consideration, freed slaves would probably have stayed in their enslaver’s household if they had developed a good relationship with them. If not, they would have left. How far they could go would depend on their financial and social resources, which given their former enslaved status, would have been limited—though not non-existent. As to the perils and promises they would have faced striking out on their own, they would face basically the same challenges as free people of their same socioeconomic standing. Because they were not enslaved based on race or any easily distinguishable physical feature, they would not have faced the racism that freed people in Antebellum America faced. That being said, even if they had economic resources—it was not so uncommon for Roman slaves to earn money for their work—their social connections would have been more limited than the average Roman’s. Slavery in Rome, although different from Atlantic slavery, was still based on social alienation and being cut off from ties within the community for a significant amount of time. Depending on how long the period of enslavement lasted, a freed person might be left without any connections in their community. Freed prisoners of war would have had less of a chance of maintaining ties to their community. This, in turn, would have made it more difficult to establish oneself within a community. Hope this helps. Most of this information comes from a book called Slavery and Society in Rome by K R Bradley.