CLAS 357
January 17, 2024
Slavery in Roman Society (Introduction)

Slave Mosaic (Roman North Africa, 2nd century CE)
Mapping Roman Slavery's History:


Overview of Roman Slavery
- legal ownership of persons as fungible property ("chattel slavery"): slaves dishonored, powerless, dehumanized objects; denied legal rights, protections & privileges of free citizens, ownership of property, bodily integrity, deprived of family & history (cf. "slaves don't have parents" joke in comedy), marriage, etc.
Cato, On Agriculture 2 (instructions for the farm's manager)
Give orders that whatever may be lacking for the current year be supplied; that what is superfluous be sold; that whatever work should be let out be let . . . Look over the livestock and hold a sale. Sell your oil, if the price is satisfactory, and sell the surplus of your wine and grain. Sell worn-out oxen, blemished cattle, blemished sheep, wool, hides, an old wagon, old tools, an old slave, a sickly slave, and whatever else is superfluous. The master should have the selling habit, not the buying habit.

Relief sculpture depicting a chained slave (Smyrna, ca. 200 CE)
- slavery's foundation: physical vulnerability & domination through violence (whipping & torture); iniuria ("outrage, injustice") constant over time (bureaucratized, institutionalized)
Inscription from Puteoli, South Italy (on hiring torturers, 1st century CE)
Whoever wishes to exact a punishment from a slave-man or slave-woman privately, let that person exact punishment thus: if he wishes to have the slave crucified on a beam, let the contractor and floggers provide the poles, the shackles, the ropes for the floggers; and whoever exacts this punishment must pay four sesterces each to the individual laborers who bring the crossbeam and to the floggers, as well as to the executioner.


L: chained slave relief (2nd-3rd centuries CE); R: slave collar (Baths of Diocletian, 4th century CE)
Inscription on tag above: FUGI TENE ME CUM REVOCAVERIS ME D(omino) M(eo) ZONINO ACCIPIS SOLIDUM (cf. "Slavery in ancient Rome", British Museum)

Gemma Augustea (1st century CE)
- sources of slaves: POWs (conquests), pirates & kidnapping, exposed children; enslaved women's children (verna: slave born in familia), sale by father
Twelve Tables IV.2
si pater filium ter venumduit, filius a patre liber esto, “If a father puts his son up for sale three times, the son shall be free from his father.”
- slavery from start of Roman Republic (509-27 BCE), 2nd century BCE influx (Mediterranean empire; plunder, etc.) > slave society (end of Roman Empire); ethnic aspects, but not slavery by race/skin color
- functions of slaves: labor on country villas & corporate farms, in urban shops, masters' business agents, domestic & highly specialized "servants"; status symbols

Mosaic representation of female slaves attending their "mistress"
- slaves' position in Roman society (Republican oligarchy > Imperial autocracy): free citizens (hierarchically ranked, i.e. nobiles, senators, equestrians, etc.), stigmatized freed persons (libert(in)i: outsiders inside Roman society), slaves (outsiders): rigorous divisions & inequalities (power, status, duties, (dis)honor, rights & privileges)
- manumission: incentive to work (peculium); freed persons beholden to masters (client/patron), obligations & burdens (personal gratitude & service obligation)


Relief sculpture depicting manumission ceremony (1st century BCE)
- overall stability/normalization of system: rebellions, late 2nd century BCE (Slave Wars, Sicily); challenges to Roman order; armies drawn from rural population (charismatic leaders) vs. Roman legions > further state investment & control, regulation

- Spartacus' revolt, 73 BCE (gladiator barracks in Capua); army of 70,000-120,000 defeated by Crassus, 71 BCE; 6,000 crucified (Via Appia, Rome to Capua); inability to effectively organize and arm themselves vs Roman armies & government; enforcement of slave system stabilizes (isolated cases of masters killed by slaves), increasing bureacratization

Fyodor Bronnikov, The Cursed Field (1878)
Stanley Kubrick, Spartacus (1960): gladiatorial fight at Capua: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=251eT20NtOI
"I'm Spartacus" solidarity scene : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKCmyiljKo0
Spartacus ("Blood and Sand", Starz, 2010-13) trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHxn8mTpAJU
- regulations to restrict master's cruelty & murder of slaves; institution persists despite "equality movements", esp. Stoicism (Seneca, died 65 CE), Christianity (Constantine, emperor 306-337 CE)
- experience of slaves: individually variable within harsh institution's (lived social reality complex)
- contradictions in slavery (slave = "a tool with a voice" = instrumentum vocale): slaves human (speech, emotions, needs, desires, etc.); enslaved by birth, chance, law; slave's subjectivity to be controlled (Plautus, Phaedrus)