CLAS 355
Masters' Attitudes & Practices; Lived Experience of Slaves
January 24, 2024


Dinner party, House of the Triclinium (Pompeii, 1st century CE)


Roman slaveholders' enslavement of others (ideological, psychological, cultural rationales) > normalizing & naturalizing slavery

1. slaves naturally inferior: foreigners, barbarians, enemies of Roman security & civilization: inferiority of character (lack of reason, self-control, dishonesty vs. master's reputed honesty, loyalty, hard work, etc.); master's moral superiority justifies control of otherly slaves

2. slaveholders' self-interest & narcissism (instrumentalism): slave an extension (prosthetic) of master, exists to serve master's will; slaves denied subjectivity, agency, inner experience; master entitled to slaves' devotion & loyalty; ideal slave (Edicts of Aediles) obedient, loyal, hardworking, thrifty, etc. > self-sacrifice, torture, suicide

3. paternalism, power, privilege (patriarchal society): "father knows best"; the slaveholder's household as orderly socio-political hierarchy/microcosm of state (Pliny); corporate body serving master's interests, power & social order (not individuals with basic freedoms, unalienable rights, etc.); paternalism strengthens & stabilizes institution > benevolent paternalism (vs. violence)


Varro (116-27 BCE), intellectual & slaveholder

Varro, On Agriculture 1.17.1 (categorizing 3 types of instruments that till land on villa)
. . . the class of tool which is articulate and that which is inarticulate and the mute; the articulate comprises the slaves [instrumentum vocale, "tool with a voice"], the inarticulate comprises the cattle, and the mute comprises the vehicles.
[cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1161b4, slaves as organa empsycha, "animate tools"]


Seneca (ca. 4 BCE-65 CE), philosopher & slaveholder


Roman columbarium

Dedicatory plaques in the columbarium of the Statilii Tauri (Rome, 1st century BCE)

Sophro, slave of Sisenna Statilius, bookkeeper. Psyche his sister, and Optata his wife made this (CIL 6.6358).

Optata, slave of Pansa, doorkeeper. Her friends made this (CIL 6.6326).

Messia, Dardanian, spinner. Iacinthus, masseur, Dardanian, made this (CIL 6.6343).

Iucundus, slave of Taurus, litter-bearer. While he lived, he was a man (vir) and acted on behalf of himself and others. While he lived, he lived honorably (honeste). Callista and Philologus dedicated this (CIL 6.6308).


**Appendix: Hostius Quadra, killed by his slaves (Seneca, Natural Questions 1.16.1)
There was a certain Hostius Quadra who turned his obscenity into a dramatic spectacle. The deified Augustus judged that this rich, miserly man, a slave to his own hundred millions, did not deserve to be avenged after he had been killed by his slaves; he virtually declared that he had been lawfully executed. His impurity was not confined to one sex, but he lusted after men as well as women. He made mirrors of the type I have just described, giving off greatly magnified images, to which a finger appeared longer and thicker than an arm. He arranged them so that, when he was submitting to a man with his back to him, he could see his partner's very movement in a mirror; and then he delighted in the illusory size of his member as though it were real. He used to go recruiting in all the bath-houses and selected men after sizing them up; but all the same he used to thrill his insatiable vice with deceptions as well. Go on, tell us that mirrors were discovered so that we could look presentable! It is disgusting to speak of what that monster, who ought to have been torn to pieces by his own mouth, said and did when mirrors were placed all around him, so that he could be a spectator of his own enormities and could fill not just his mouth but his eyes with things that burden the conscience even when kept secret, things that anyone would deny having perpetrated even to himself . . . he surrounded himself with mirrors in which he could distribute and exhibit his shocking acts; and because he could not watch so attentively when he had lowered his head and fastened onto someone else's groin, he displayed his efforts to himself in images. He watched the lust of his own mouth; he watched the men whom he admitted at all points simultaneously; sometimes he shared himself out between a male and females, and so he passively submitted his whole body to them, he watched those unspeakable acts. What on earth did that impure man leave to do in the dark? He was not afraid of the daylight, but he exhibited to himself, he commended to himself, those monstrous couplings. Would you not expect that he even wanted to have his picture painted in art? . . . that monster had turned his own obscenity into a spectacle, and he exhibited to himself things that no night is dark enough to hide. "I submit," he said, "to a man and a woman at the same time. Nevertheless even with the part of me that is so far redundant I act the man for someone's humiliation. All my members are occupied in acts of debauchery; let my eyes have a share in my lust as well and be its witnesses and inspectors. Even the things that are kept out of sight by the structure of our bodies should be made visible by technology, so that no one can think I do not know what I am doing . . . I shall surround myself with the kind of mirror that gives off incredibly large inages. If I could, I would make them real; since I cannot, I shall feed on the illusion. Let my obscenity see more than it is capable of; let it be astonished at things it submits to." What an outrage! He was perhaps killed too quickly, before he could see it: he ought to have been sacrificed in front of his own mirror!