Roman Civilization

CMS 206 /History 206

• When studying Roman slavery we are faced first with two challenges that preceed the historical problems the subject poses.The first is a moral challenge. We live in a world that condemns the practice of slavery. If we impose, a priori, the moral reasoning of our age upon the Roman period, we will in all probability fail to understand the complexity of the experience of both slave and owner. Conversely, if we suspend moral judgment on the Roman practice of slavery, we risk ignoring the historical fact of the barbarity of the practice and the brutality of the experience for both slave and owner. I don't have an answer on how to resolve this challenge. However, it does seem to me that if I can maintain a state of constant unease when considering the topic, I am doing a better job than if I simply ignore the moral issues, or refuse to consider the historical issues because I am appalled by the evidence.
  
  
• The second challenge we face comes the fact that Eurpeans and Americans practiced slavery until quite recently in our own history. What we know of slavery tends to come from this history. The Roman slave trade, however, was quite different from the European. The Roman practice of slavery, moreover, was far more complex and varied than the American. So while it sometimes makes sense to compare the recent Western history of slavery to Roman (e.g., plantations and latifundia), the comparison can be misleading.
  
  
• The identity and experience of a Roman slave varied depending on the period of Roman history in which she lived, her place of birth, and the tasks to which she was assigned. Moreover, her experience of life depended largely on the personality of those that owned and/or supervised her. Thus, like all the various actors in the Roman scene, we are better off trying to compose a picture of slavery as a social institution, than focusing on the experience of individual slaves about whom we happen to have historical evidence. Consider these two examples.
  
  
• Cicero had a slave named Tiro. Tiro was Cicero's secretary, confidant, right-hand man, editor, and after Cicero's death, the publisher of a number of Cicero's speeches (and thus, although you may not yet believe me, we are substantially indebted to the man). He also wrote a biography of Cicero, a book on grammar and a book on philosophical questions. He also invented a type of shorthand. Cicero, his brother and his children were very close to Tiro. When Tiro was ill, Cicero worried and fretted over him like a nervous hen. Cicero's son, Marcus, wrote to Tiro whenever he was in hot water with the old man, suggesting a relationship we would find more between an indulgent uncle and nephew, rather than that between a young lord and family slave. In 53 BCE, Cicero freed Tiro. On the occasion, his brother Quintus wrote Cicero a letter of congratulations: "I am truly grateful for what you have done about Tiro, in judging his former condition to be below his deserts and preferring us to have him as a friend rather than a slave. Believe me, I jumped for joy when I read your letter and his. Thank you, and congratulations." [Tr. K. Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome]. Scholars believe that Tiro may have turned 50 on the day he was freed.
  
  
• Tiro's experience should puzzle us. If Cicero and his family felt that way about Tiro, how could Cicero not have freed him, and not a heck of a lot earlier than 53 BCE? How could Quintus so admire Tiro, but find his legal status a barrier to friendship? How could Quintus' admiration not lead to a recognition that every slave's humanity deserved respect? On the other hand, if you grew up in a world where the social institution of slavery was normal, even normative, how could one recognize the human dignity of any slave?
  
  
• The second example I want you to consider comes from the Roman Digest, the compilation of laws, legal problems and legal reasoning created for the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, CE. The Digest includes the analysis of Ulpian, one of the greatest legal scholars in Roman history, who lived three centuries after Tiro. Ulpian was considering a legal problem posed by the Roman law that required the seller of slaves to warrantee that the slave was free from any disease or defect. Could, Ulpian ask, a seller give such a warrantee for a slave whose tongue had been cut out? Or was the slave inherently defective? One scholar said no. Horses whose tongues had been cut out, after all, could not be warranteed, he argued. If a horse couldn't, then a slave couldn't. Ulpian doesn't explicitly contradict this scholar, but his analysis seems to suggest that if the slave could be useful, than the warrantee could be granted. He does say that slaves who stammer, lisp, ramble or rave can be warranteed. Ulpian never stops to consider the implications of the analogy between the tongueless slave and horse. What is more, his matter of fact treatment of the question indicates that Romans were this sadisitic and brutal to slaves often enough that the questions was one a good legal scholar should consider, and not consider odd.
  
  
• The practice of slavery.
  
  • From the period beginning with the end of the 2nd Punic War through the fourth century CE, slave ownership was widespread throughout the Roman citizenry. Romans owned slaves on a variety of scales. A 2 BCE law, for examples, regulates the number of slaves a master could free in his will. This law divides slaveowners into groups who owned 1-2, 3-10, 11-30, 31-100, 101-500 and 501 or more slaves. Slave owning was a part of Roman culture from Rome's earliest days (and the legal concepts and procedures necessary to effectuate slavery were already well developed by the beginning of the Republic), but was not practiced on a massive scale until the wars of imperial expansion.
    
    
  • The practice of slavery in peninsular Italy varied dramatically from other regions in the Roman empire (Italy imported slaves, largely via warfare). By the time of the principate, scholars believe that 30 to 40% of the total population of Italy was enslaved. In the century between Cicero and Tiberius, Romans needed 100,000 new slaves per year to satisfy manpower needs. Compare this to the record of American slave holders who averaged about 30,000 new slaves a year (with peaks of 60,000 at the height of the regime).
    
    
  • The economics of Roman slavery are different than those of other slaves societies (e.g., U.S., Brazil). While Romans understood that they could make money using slave labor, the mere fact of owning slaves was a mark of social distinction. Particularly among the Roman elite, slave owning was a social prestige making venture as muchas, if not more than a financial profit making venture. We know for example, that the Empress Livia employed slaves in more than fifty separate functions in her household, and that these functions seem often duplicative to us (separate slaves to keep hens and cocks, a third slave to fatten them up). Thus, while we need to understand the legal and financial aspects of Roman slavery, it is even more important to understand slavery as a social institution predicated on the exercise of authority of an empowered person over a disempowered person.
    
  • Romans brought their slave society mentality to every part of the empire they created. They frequently encountered slavery already in practice in the regions of the Mediterranean they conquered (e.g. Greece). When they discovered societies that did not practice slavery, it was a phenomonen they commented upon. When the Essenes, a Jewish sect at the end of the Republic, renounced the practice of slavery, the Romans thought they were bizarre. Romans, in fact, assumed slavery was a universal social practice (and it was certainly widespread in the ancient Mediterranean).Slavery, accordingly, became a social institution embedded in every part of the world that the Romans came to dominate.
    
• The legal status of slaves:
  
  
  • Slaves were property. Owners exercised dominium over slaves. Dominium was the absolute right to dispose of and control the use of a piece of property. Interestingly enough, the authority of a pater over persons in his family was most frequently described as potestas. Legally, slavery was conceived of as a kind of death. Romans deemed citizens who did not return from battle as 'dead' because a captured citizen who survived battle would most certainly become an enemy slave. Thus, his will was read, his marriage formally ended, because the citizen was 'socially' dead to the Roman world.
    
    
  • Similarly, the Romans legally conceived of the slaves they owned as cut off from all the rights and rituals of human society. Slaves could have no family. In practice, slaves formed relationships and had children. But they had no legal authority to protect these relationships. If you were a slave who had borne or fathered a child, the child was not yours. Similarly, while owners frequently gave slaves a peculium (an allowance), the slave had no right to it and had to surrender it on demand. The peculium was simply a device which permitted an owner to use his property more efficiently. Note that the legal theory here sounds very rigid (like the pater's ius necandi) and that social practice was much more flexible.
    
  • A slave by definition had no honor or dignity. The essence of being a slave was the inability to protect one's body. While every citizen had the right to trial and appeal before they suffered physical punishment, a slave was defined by the absence of such a right and expectation. An owner could beat and abuse slaves (and it could not legally be considered assault) and compel sex from slaves of either sex (and it could not be considered rape). [Romans did not deal well with the notion that female citizens slept with male slaves, however.] If someone had sex with a slave without the owner's permission, however, the owner could sue that person for trespass.
    
    
  • The inviolability of the citizen's body was a very important concept in the complex of ideas that constituted Roman identity. One of Cicero's most telling charges against Verres, the corrupt govern of Sicily, is that he beat citizens (something only a tyrant would do). One of the most surprising aspects of St. Paul's identity was his Roman citizenship. He was able to protect himself from abusive treatment by local authorities with the simple assertion "civis Romanus sum."
    
  • The mere experience of a state in which an individual could not protect his own body from abuse was inherently and permanently degrading. Thus, even if your owner treated you quite well, Romans believed that you were degraded simply by being subject to another man's ability to treat you poorly if he chose.
    
  • A child born of a slave woman was a slave (the legal status of his father being irrelevant) and the property of the slave woman's owner.
    
• The supply of slaves:
  
  
  • There is an unbreakable link between Rome's experience as militaristic, expansionist empire and its experience as a slave society. From the time of the Punic Wars until decision in the early principate to limit the geographical boundaries of Rome's domain, Romans obtained slaves in massive numbers by conquering other political entitites. After a successful battle a Roman commander might ransom captive soldiers back to family and friends. More typically, captives were sold wholesale to dealers who followed the army. The dealers paid the generals and arranged shipment of the slaves back to Italy (or numerous other ports with active slave sale and distribution centers), saving commanders a lot of logistical problems. Alternatively, a commander might distribute a captive population among his men, one to two slaves a soldier, as a form of a bonus.
    
  • Once Rome decided to stop conquering the world, they needed an alternative source of slaves. The answer was homegrown slaves. These were called "vernae." Among slaves, it appears that being a verna had some status [cf. distinctions between field and house slaves in the American south], and Roman slave owners tended to believe that vernae, who had known no other estate but slavery, were more easily managed. Some Romans (e.g. Cato and Crassus) turned the art of raising, training and selling vernae into a business enterprise. Owners would talent spot the young children of slave women, select some to be educated and/or trained for specific crafts (e.g., literary secretary or linen weaver), and then sell them at a considerable profit.
    
  • Another source of slaves was foundlings. Abandonment was a common method of birth control. It was not unheard of for childless couples to take a foundling, raise it and adopt it as their own child. However, it was equally, if not more common, for Romans to take foundlings and maintain them as slaves [which they had every legal right to do].
    
    
  • The Romans also traded for slaves. We know, for example, that a great portion of the Roman wine sold in Gaul was paid for in human currency (as many as 15,000 a year). One aspect of Gallic and German slavery that the Romans found interesting was the willingness [at least from the Roman point of view] of individuals to sell themselves into slavery to pay off their own debts. European tribes also sold their war captives to Roman slave traders and merchants. Finally, the practice of piracy provided a steady supply of slaves. Pirates would routinely kidnap individuals from seized ships and sell them into slavery. Similarly, they could attack coastal towns and villages and sell the population wholesale into slavery. Finally, they often worked with gangs based on the mainland. The gangs would attack and seize the towns, turn them over to the pirates who would arrange the sale of captives in ports with slave merchants, and split the profits with the gangs.
    
  • Slave merchants sold their products in forum markets subject to the regulation of aediles. They had to warrantee the health of the slave and inform prospective purchasers of any problems in the history of the slave (tendencies to fight or run away, for example). The relevant information was written on a label hung from the slave's neck. New slaves (who were considered easier to train than previously owned slaves) had their feet dusted with chalk. Prospective buyers inspected their purchases, who stood chained on a raised platform, as they would livestock.
    
    
• The lives and jobs of slaves:
  
  
  • enslavement meant a sudden and complete rupture of all familial bonds
    
    
  • transportation to a completely alien existence
    
    
    • language
    • custom
    • often urban environment after tribal existence
      
      
  • The working life of slaves depended greatly on the economic status of the owner. A citizen who could only afford one or two slaves, probably used them for all sorts of purposes. Conversely, a very wealthy Roman, could afford slaves trained for specific tasks (a paedagogus, musician or weaver, for example).
    
    
  • The experience of slavery also depended heavily on the general type of labor to which a slave was assigned. Slaves assigned to mines and galleys lived under a certain sentence of death. Slaves sold to gladiatorial schools might live longer (and some could even fight their way to freedom). Farm slaves (familia rustica) were subject to the authority of bailiffs (vilici, usually themselves slaves) who managed the agricultural estates of wealthy Romans. Farm work could be physically demanding and the personality of the overseer often determined the field hand's experience of his life and work. Farm slaves not merely performed the range of field work that agriculture implies, but some would also specialize in engineering and mechanical side of the job as well. A slave who made ploughs, for example, would rarely use them himself. The familia rustica might also include children of slaves born in the families city home, who had been sent to the country to be reared. Whether they would remain on the farm or be recalled to the city would be determined at a later stage in their lives. Slave children worked as much as their elders, pruning vines, harvesting fodder, etc.
    
    
  • Household slaves of elite families in Rome (familia urbana) probably enjoyed the greatest standard of living and the most complex social experience. However, slaves routinely enjoyed food, clothing and living space of significantly lower quality than free members of the familia. The distinction was even greater for slave members of the familia rustica. As we saw with Livia, members of the Roman elite could subdivide work within the household to an astonishingly minute scale. On consul kept a slave whose only job was to brush the consul's teeth. Large slaveholding urban homes tended to have a hierarchical organization of slave labor and manage the labor almost the way one thinks about managing a business today. Because of the complex organization of the household, it was possible for slaves to progress from one job to another requiring greater training, skill, etc. Conversely, slaves could be punished by a sudden demotion or banishment to the farm.
    
    
  • Slaves might also be trained in the arts and crafts and work in industry. Relatively few Roman industries were large scale (armories, tile making, pottery), but it was not uncommon for Romans to own workshops manned by slaves who could copy manuscripts or craft jewelry, woven and died cloth, and other specialty items. Slaves with such unique and profitable skills probably enjoyed a greater standard of living and easier relations with their owners than those who could merely offer physical labor to a bailiff on a farm 100 miles from the owner's notice.
    
    
• The resistance of slaves:
  
  
  • Roman citizens lived in persistent fear of slave rebellion articulated with an urgency far greater than the evidence of actual resistence seems to support. This appears to be a characteristic of slave societies (true in Brazil, the American South, etc.).
    
     
  • mass and individual suicide were not isolated responses to enslavement.
    
    
  • There are recorded instances of slaves killing masters. While Romans sometimes explained these cases in terms of the cruelty of the owner's treatment, they never developed the notion that owners had any obligation to treat slaves humanely. No cruelty inflicted by an owner was a crime. Any injury inflicted by a slave upon his owner was a henious crime (no matter what the reason) that had to be responded to with swift, certain and brutal punishment.The traditional Roman practice had been to slaughter all slave members of a familia when one had assaulted an owner.
    
    
  • The few examples we have of large scale slave uprisings (e.g. Spartacus) suggest that given the opportunity, vast numbers of slaves were happy to embrace rebellion. Tens of thousands of slaves joined Spartacus in a rebellion that lasted two years. Crassus eventually crushed the rebellion and crucified the survivors, and Romans never suffered a rebellion on that scale again. However, slaves continued to resist enslavement by other means.
    
    
  • In all slave societies we know of, slaves individually and in small groups routinely resisted their owners by dramatic (suicide, an act slave owners found particularly wicked, murder, running away) and subtle means (work slowdowns, petty sabotage). Owners were well aware of this resistance and much as southern American slave owners complained of the laziness and rascality, inherent in the 'nature' of the slave, so too did the Roman slave owner. Running away was far easier for Roman than American slaves because Roman slavery was not linked to racial identity. Thus a slave who ran away had a shot at "passing" in free society. Runaways who were recaptured were usually branded to prevent a reoccurance.

Roman Slavery & Slave Revolts / Slavery & Christianity / Roman slave revolts

EB on Roman slavery / Legal status in the Roman world

translated primary sources on Roman slavery