Part I – Identifications (8 points each, 64 points total)
benevolent paternalism: the patronizing assumption that the paterfamilias "knows best" and has the best interests of his slaves at heart – as long as they serve his intersts and subordinate their own needs, desires, etc., to his will. The slaveholder sees himself as the benevolent ruler of the orderly state-like household he heads, in which his slaves willingly and loyally serve; the idea is most fully developed in Seneca, Letter 47
natal alienation: the systematic erasure of personal, social and cultural history upon enslavement; the enslaved are entirely deracinated, cast into a powerless state enforced by violence and marked by the loss of all legal (citizen's) rights, in which their former connections of place, language, social and family identity, and even their birth names are obliterated. Roman slaves usually experienced this immediately after being taken as prisoners of war and forced into long and disorienting journeys to Italy.
patria potestas: a Roman father's infamous power over his children (from their birth, and usually until his death), his wife (if married cum manu), and his slaves/property. The paterfamilias theoretically (in law) possessed the "power of life and death" over his children, though few fathers (probably) executed their sons or daughters, as the few "historical" examples are dubious, some clearly being cultural myths to promote loyalty to the state (patria) over loyalty to the family. Roman fathers certainly had absolute power to manage household finances, including their adult children's property, whose marriages they typically arranged. The Twelve Tables allowed a father to sell his son into slavery three times.
obsequium: reflecting a belief that slaveholders merited compensation for manumitted slaves, Roman law required freedpersons to display respect, gratitude, and loyalty toward their former masters (now patrons), and there were legal limitations on their seeking redress for the patron's exploitation of them.
peculium: money and property a slave or child was allowed to accumulate, though always at the discretion of the master/father. A slave could use the peculium to purchase his freedom (Hegio in Captivi chides one of his guards for not building up his peculium).
columbarium: literally, a "pigeon's nesting box", used of burial chambers that included niches for urns and burial plaques. One of the obligations of slave collegia was to provide simple, monumentalizing plaques for its members, such as those that survive in the columbarium of the Statilii Tauri.
matrona: the "mistress" of a Roman household or wife ( uxor) of the paterfamilias. The matrona did not have legally or socially sanctioned powers commensurate with her husband's, but was expected to be obedient, loyal, sexually chaste, devoted to the family's interests, etc., in which case she might be idealized by the nostalgic term materfamilias (cf. Lucretia et al.). matronae might, however, exercise considerable influence in daily life/household politics (and, for example, probably had a say in arranging their children's marriages), all the more so if they came to the marriage with a signficant dowry.
social death: a concept usually associated with sociologist Orlando Patterson, it refers to the powerless condition of a slave, who is deracinated, stripped of all legal (citizen's) rights and even physical autonomy – and therefore cast into a "death-like" state in terms of social and legal status. Trimalchio on his mural depicts himself as being "revived" (and even apotheosized!) from his social death.
Spartacus: a gladiator who revolted in his barracks at Capua in 73 BCE and was able to gather a large and formidable army of mostly slaves before he was finally defeated by Crassus in 71 BCE, when he and his followers were publicly executed. This was the last of the major slave rebellions of the 2nd-1st centuries BCE and probably led to greater enforcement measures by the state in order to stabilize the slaveholding system.
Micio: the liberal urban father of Terence's Adelphoe who adopts and raises his rustic and conservative brother's son Aeschinus. The play suggests Micio's lenient style of parenting is less than effective by showing that he and his son do not communicate freely and that there are limitations to even Micio's financial generosity and tolerance.
libertus: a freedman in relationship to his patron (versus libertinus = a freedmen as a member of his social class); following manumission, freedpersons occupied a space between slavery & (full) freedom, as they were stigmatized as former slaves and still owed services to their former masters. Freedmen could vote but could not hold Roman magistracies; if wealthy, they could serve as minor officials in local religious cults, such as the seviri Augustales.
Trimalchio: the (stereotyped) fabulously wealthy freedman of Petronius' Satyricon, obsessed with his status and wealth (as evidenced in his elaborate dinner party). He tells his own story of rising as a boy-slave in his household as the master's favorite and by learning accounting, eventually inheriting half of his master's property and then becoming successful as a trader and moneylender.
Part II – Commentaries (20 points each, 100
points total)
1. [Petronius, Sayricon 29]
(1) Petronius
(2) Satyricon (or "Dinner at Trimalchio's")
(3) Encolpius (the narrator) has just entered Trimalchio's house and he describes a narrative fresco
(4) some sample points for elaboration:
a. the mural's depiction of realistic details of the Roman slave market, here marking the "Asian" Trimalchio's deracination and former enslavement;
b. the thorough mythologizing of Trimalchio's biography (cf. Minerva, Mercury, Fortuna, the Fates), from slavery to freedom;
c.
the mural's extraordinary representation of Trimalchio's manumission as a return from "social death" (note the boundary-crossing Mercury Psychopompus) to quasi-divine status, i.e. apotheosis on a magistrate's platform.
2. [Phaedrus, Fables 3.7]
(1) Phaedrus
(2) Fables (specifically, "The Wolf and the Sleek Dog")
(3) after learning the conditions of the dog's life in captivity, the hungry wolf decides to remain independent
(4) some sample points for elaboration:
a. Phaedrus' running theme of freedom versus enslavement in the Fables, reflecting his own precarious status as freedman of Augustus;
b. the wolf as an avator of uncompromising/-ed freedom, i.e. a paramount value not to be compromised at any price (another preoccupation of the Fables), and demonstrating an unwillingness to swap freedom for security (as happens broadly in autocracy);
c. the wolf and his views on freedom/slavery can be taken to reflect a (poor) freedperson's pride in his new status and stake to identity in early imperial Rome.
3. [Cato, On Agriculture 2.6-7]
(1) Cato
(2) On Agriculture
(3) Cato relates the master's instructions for the overseer (vilicus) when he visits the farm
(4) some sample points for elaboration:
a. Cato's emphasis on economic efficiency in even the most minute details as evidence for a transition to larger "corporate" farming in the second century BCE;
b. the list of worn tools, non-human animals, and the "old/sickly" slaves to be sold, stunning to a modern reader for its harsh instrumentalization of human labor (cf. Varro's category of the slave as a "talking tool");
c. the order to "give directions in writing" attests to the owner's desire to hire the best possible overseer, whose skills include even literacy, an indication of the true extent of a vilicus' master-like responsibilities (especially given the owner's frequent absence).
4. [Seneca, Letter 47.18-19]
(1) Seneca
(2) Letter 47
(3) as he wraps up the letter, Seneca makes it clear that he's not calling for the freeing of all slaves/abolition of the institution of slavery
(4) some sample points for elaboration:
a. Seneca's unwillingness – and cognitive failure – to take his earlier claim about the equality of human beings (at birth) to its logical conclusion, and so to free all slaves (he is apparently impeded by tradition, social custom, normalization of slavery as an institution, self-interest, etc., from doing so);
b. Seneca's sharp focus on the moral well-being and character of the philosopher-slaveholder (i.e. his ethical self-improvement, the main purpose of the letters) seemingly blinds him to issues of social justice here;
c. the benevolently paternalistic and narcissistic claim that a capable/successful elite slaveholder needn't whip his slaves – with his own hands or in public at least – by securing their personal loyalty.
5. [Columella, On Agricuture 1.8.7]
(1) Columella
(2) On Agricuture
(3) Columella details his instructions for the farm's overseer (vilicus)
(4) some sample points for elaboration:
a. Columella's marked commitment to controlling every aspect of the vilicus' life (viewed as an extension of the owner's), including restrictions on his movements;
b. the underlying fear that the city and its urban markets will morally corrupt the rustic overseer, a preoccupation of the traditionalist and paternalistic Columella's (elsewhere expressed in his negative views of city-slaves);
c. the prohibition against unapproved pathways as evidence that slaves committed such (small) acts of creative resistance to assert their willfulness, agency, etc.
6. [Plautus, Captivi 707ff.]
(1) Plautus
(2) Captivi
(3) after the captives' plot is exposed, Tyndarus attempts to explain his deceptive role in it to Hegio
(4) some sample points for elaboration:
a. the doubly enslaved Tyndarus' "noble" (i.e. aristocratic) appeal to the ethics of reciprocity ("do unto others as . . ."), one of many ways the play emphasizes the arbitrariness of slavery/who is enslaved versus who is free, and which is here rejected by Hegio;
b. Tyndarus' identification of slavery's challenging "double bind", as when a Roman slave must serve both a master and the master's son (whose interests may diverge);
c. the implied theme here of Roman parenting as a form of slavery (Tyndarus is in fact Hegio's son) – yet another layer/facet of enslavement in this complexly framed play.
7. [Terence, Adelphoe 26ff.]
(1) Terence
(2) Adelphoe
(3) Micio, in the play's opening monologue, contrast his brother's parenting with his own
(4) some sample points for elaboration:
a. Micio lays out (in a monologue that functions as Adelphoe's prologue) the play's antithetical themes/ideas (i.e. city/country, liberal/conservative, slavery/freedom, etc.);
b. the brothers' sharply contrasted styles of parenting as opposing ends of a parental spectrum that will be tested and evaluated in the play;
c. Micio's affable and winning manner (here established with spectators), which initially stands in sharp contrast to the grim and authoritarian Demea's, but becomes less sympathetic as his brother challenges it and ultimately modifies his own manner toward compromise in the end.
8. [Livy, Ab Vrbe Condita 1.13]
(1) Livy
(2) Ab Vrbe Condita
(3) the abducted Sabine women stop the fighting between their husbands and fathers
(4) some sample points for elaboration:
a. in the Roman myth of incorporating women into Roman citizenship, the Sabines represent a Roman ideal by surrendering their personal wishes, needs, etc., to those of their fathers and husbands;
b. the idealized matronae show themselves willing even to sacrifice their bodies/lives for the good of the new, decidely patriarchal (regal) city-state (cf. Lucretia's sacrifice at the beginning of the Republic), i.e. the body-politic;
c. the women's function as enduring models (i.e. down to Livy's day) of women's socially prescribed roles as mediators and pawns in men's political disputes. (including power-marriages)