Roman Slavery

This paper examines the references to slavery within Pliny's Letters. Examining so called 'invisible' Romans can be challenging yet within a single text a wide variety of information can be extracted. What is revealed is a complex social hierarchy where the perception of slavery and slaves can vary widely.

Explains the historiographical evolution of Finley's thesis that slaveholding societies can be broken into two categories: 'Slave Societies" and "societies with slaves." Demonstrates its rootedness in mid-twentieth-century debates between Marxists and Weberians, its heavy reliance on the work of Istvan Hahn, and its essentializing ethnocentrism.

While describing the Greco-roman world or what is called classical antiquity (from 8th-5th cent BC), one will never miss out on the deep-rooted institution of slavery. The dominant mode of production in classical Greece, which governed the complex articulation of each local economy and gave its imprint to the whole civilization of the city-state, was that of slavery. This was to be true of Rome as well. The Ancient World as a whole was never continuously or ubiquitously marked by the predominance of slave labour. But its great classical epochs, when the civilization of Antiquity flowered-Greece in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. and Rome from the 2nd century B.C. to the 2nd century A.D.-were those in which slavery was massive and general, amidst other labour systems.

The neo-republican conception of freedom as non-domination has emerged as a powerful framework for conceptualizing the dynamic relationship between power, democracy, and constitutionalism in modernity. Despite this, I argue that adaptations of republican freedom to the problem of slavery displace attention to race and foreclose more productive ways of addressing how racial slavery constitutes a distinct form of oppression. To illuminate the limitations of neo-republicanism, I turn to the political thought of abolitionists David Walker and Ottobah Cugoano. Both utilize comparative histories of race and slavery to reveal the specificity of modern slavery as a form of oppression, which cannot be captured as an issue of domination in the technical sense of the term. They thus pose challenges to neo-republican theory for its failure to fully appreciate the historical differences between ancient and modern slavery. To do so would illuminate how neo-republican theory faces severe limitations in providing an adequate conceptualization of oppression in the case of racial slavery.

John Byron is professor of New Testament at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio and is well-known for his publications on slavery in the Roman world. His Slavery Metaphors in Early Judaism and Pauline Christianity: A Traditio-historical and Exegetical Examination (WUNT/2 162; Tubingen: Mohr-Seibeck, 2003) is a major contribution to the study  of slavery in the New Testament and his article “The Epistle to Philemon: Paul’s Strategy for Forging the Ties of Kinship” in Jesus and Paul: Global Perspectives in Honor of James D. G. Dunn for his 70th Birthday (London: T&T Clark, 2009) laid the foundation for this academic novel. As with the other contributions in the Week in the Life series from IVP Academic, Byron is a world-class scholar who knows his material every well as he spins an engaging tale.

There are four inscriptions from Lusitania in which freedpersons appear to manumit their own children: (1) Camira Sunuae lib(erta) / an(norum) XXV h(ic) s(ita) e(st) / Docquirus Catueni / et Sunua Docquiri / lib(erta) fil(iae) f(aciendum) c(uraverunt) (Orjais, first century, probably first half).1 Ferreira interprets: "Catuenus libertou Docquirus; este, por seu turno, uniu-se a Sunua, que libertou; dessa união nasceu Camira, que foi libertada pela mãe.

Christianity emerged within the Roman empire, during a time in which the worst forms of slavery were common. Unlike the Hebrews of ancient Israel, early Christians were living in a society over which they had virtually no influence, and in which the legal systems were totally beyond their control. Many people who became converted to Christianity would have already owned slaves, and would have inherited well established Roman cultural attitudes to slaves and slavery, which were anathema to the gospel and the teaching of Christ. How did early Christianity address the issue of slavery in such an environment?

Constantine usually opposes, by means of his legislation, the sexual
relationship between a free woman and a slave. The paper analyzes CTh.
4.12.3 which constitutes an exception. The emperor’s chancery modifies
the senatus consultum Claudianum and creates an entirely new species of
family, formed by an ingenua and by an imperial slave; the offspring will
share the legal condition of the Latini Iuniani. The law aims to ensure the
efficiency of the imperial estates and the emperor’s control over his household.
The constitution shows independence in lawmaking and a sound
knowledge of classical Roman law.

Key words: Constantine, family, imperial household, senatus consultum
Claudianum, Latini Iuniani.

The point of departure of this paper is two burial grounds excavated by A.-L. Delattre near the amphitheatre at Carthage in the late 19th century. In total, Delattre found more than 900 funerary inscriptions mentioning almost 1,300 individuals. The two necropoleis can be dated from the end of first century to the early third century CE, after which there was no remaining space for further burials in the second burial ground. They are also known in French as the cimetières des officiales as most of those buried were members of the familia Caesaris at Carthage. The imperial burial grounds have largely been ignored by modern scholarship or studied in isolation from their social and archaeological contexts. This is regrettable, since this deathscape of a well-defined group of imperial slaves, freedmen and their families is an excellent point of departure for discussion of the demographic patterns and also the methodology of historical demography.

A paucity of identifiable archaeological material makes it difficult to locate slavery in the archaeological record, but the figurines of slave characters in Roman comedy represent a rich, untapped resource. One character in particular, the ‘clever slave’ (servus callidus), with his devious schemes and sharp wit, captured the imagination of Roman society. This clever slave’s popularity is attested archaeologically, with thousands of charming figurines spanning different time periods and geographical areas of the Classical world. Much discussed in the field of classics, no previous work has been undertaken to examine this character from an archaeological perspective in terms of its societal significance. Slave statuettes have been unearthed in homes, sanctuaries and tombs- diverse contexts that hint at their multitudinous purposes. By examining a representative sample of the material evidence alongside comedic texts I provide an in-depth look at servus callidus figurines: their form and iconography, their archaeological contexts and their potential agency for the society that produced and purchased them.

In this book, Sarah Levin-Richardson offers the first authoritative examination of Pompeii's purpose-built brothel, the only verifiable brothel from Greco-Roman antiquity. Taking readers on a tour of all of the structure's evidence, including the rarely seen upper floor, she illuminates the subculture housed within its walls. Here, prostitutes could flout the norms of society and proclaim themselves sexual subjects and agents, while servile clients were allowed to act as 'real men'. Prostitutes and clients also exchanged gifts, greetings, jokes, taunts, and praise. Written in a clear, engaging style, and accompanied by an ample illustration program and translations of humorous and haunting graffiti, Levin-Richardson's book will become a new touchstone for those interested in the history of women, slavery, and prostitution in the classical world.

This paper is an attempt to understand some of the implications the legal complexities of ius patronatus had for a historic analysis of Roman society. Since its main importance lay on the rights over the inheritance of freedmen, we must conclude that it was ill-devised as an instrument for an economic exploitation of freedmen by their patrons. We should also take into account the possibility that in certain cases there was no ius patronatus. This leads us to a deep analysis of the so-called incerti from the album of Herculaneum who are considered to be freedmen who lacked a patron (with the orcini as a relevant group within this category). Other options (such as considering them to be Junian Latins or promoted Junian Latins) are less likely.

Recants my previously held position that pederasty was limited to the love of boys aged 12-18; presents evidence to show that there was no downward limit in the use of child slaves for sex, and indeed that freeborn children were objectified as well.  Mainly text-based, with some attention to the eroticized images of small children that were everywhere in luxury homes.  Deals with the reception of this material by the Uranian poets in the late 19th century and by similar readers, in the context of the rise of the study of ancient homosexuality in the 1970s.

Quaderno n. 8 –– Conferenze 2003-2004, stampato per conto del Circolo da Legatoria Manna, Rende (CS), 2005 –– Sommario: (1) GUSSO Massimo, Aspetti della schiavitù in Roma imperiale. Un tragico racconto di Tacito pp. 1-15; (2) CADEDDU Lorenzo, I 207 anni del tricolore pp. 16-26; (3) IMPERIO Loredana, La donna nel Medioevo pp. 27-40; (4) GUSSO Massimo, Il prodigio del fulmine nell'antichità pp. 41-62; (5) CADEDDU Lorenzo, Lo spionaggio nella 1a guerra mondiale pp. 63-77; (6) TOFFOLI Aldo, Le monache di Santa Giustina, Giovanni Antonio Flaminio e il Vescovo Giovanni Grimani pp. 78-96; (7) CADEDDU Lorenzo, Due Caproni pp. 97-101 (8) DE ZORZI Oscar, L'Annunciazione del Previtali, nella chiesa di S. Maria Annunciata di Meschio, a Vittorio Veneto pp.102-136

Formación online en esclavitud romana impartida a través del Centro de Estudios de la Universidad de Murcia.

La esclavitud es uno de los elementos que define la sociedad romana antigua. Su estudio adquirió una gran importancia a partir de los años ochenta del siglo pasado, pero todavía hoy sigue siendo un tema con gran presencia dentro de la historiografía como bien demuestran recientes publicaciones (véase la coordinada por Keith Bradley y Paul Cartledge The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 1, 2011). El objetivo principal de este curso es el de recuperar, hasta donde las fuentes lo permitan, la vida de las personas que sucumbieron a la esclavitud en la Roma antigua, incluyendo a hombres, mujeres, niños y niñas. Al terminar el curso el alumnado deberá ser consciente de la existencia del grupo social más pobre y humilde del orbe romano, de la calidad de vida de las personas que lo conformaban y de su contribución a la sociedad y a la economía romana. Se pretende así recuperar la historia de esos otros y otras que, como ha sido señalado, caminan silenciosos por las fuentes antiguas y, sobre los que todavía hay mucho que reflexionar; no en vano todavía hoy se vinculan a la vida de esclavos y esclavas en la Roma antigua las palabras invisibilidad y olvido.

RESUMEN: En el caso de una cognitio imperial, reportado por el jurista Marcelo, el testador había anulado los herederos de su testamento. Había anulado también la disposición de libertad de un esclavo (manumisión testamentaria). Surgió entonces la pregunta de si todo el testamento, que también contenía legados, era nulo por falta de heredero o si los legados y la manumisión eran válidos a pesar de la falta de la institución de herederos. En la opinión de Marcelo, los legados debían ser considerados válidos y el emperador Marco Aurelio le da la razón. Esta es una decisión bastante revolucionaria, por cuanto suplanta uno de los 'dogmas' más fuertes del derecho hereditario romano «nemo pro parte testatus, pro parte intestatus decedere potest». La verdadera sorpresa de la decisión se refiere a la manumisión. Por lógica debería ser inválida. Impresionado por el énfasis en la humanidad expresado por Marcelo, el Emperador decide en favor de la libertad del esclavo. El principio jurídico detrás de esta decisión es el favor libertatis, que hasta ahora no ha sido estudiado con la debida atención. PALABRAS CLAVE: Marco Aurelio, favor libertatis, heredis institutio, humanitas.

En este artículo se realiza un análisis de las fuentes epigráficas disponibles para estudiar el papel de los esclavos públicos e imperiales como cultores en Hispania. A través de estas fuentes se analiza el estatus de los esclavos que en ellas aparecen y los medios y objetivos de su devoción, así como las divinidades aludidas. Por último, se estudian los testimonios de collegia de esclavos públicos hispanos, donde la faceta religiosa era un elemento fundamental.
This paper analyses epigraphic sources with the aim of studying the role of public and imperial slaves as worshippers in Hispania. Through these sources, the analysis bears on the status of slaves, the means and ends of their cult practices and their gods. Finally, the testimonies of the collegia of Spanish public slaves are studied, in the light of the essential religious side of these collegia.

Legal and other texts insist that slaves (servi) are not permitted to join the Roman army. The evidence suggests, however, that slaves might serve if they were owned by the army itself. After demonstrating the presence of public slaves (servitia castris) in Rome’s armed forces (I-II) this paper examines the nature of the duties of calones and lixae (III). Next, it is considered whether soldiers belonging to collegia were  public slaves with special attention being paid to capsarii “medical orderlies” (IV). Then the status of the augusti vernae in Legion III Augusta is analyzed (V). Next, the one-namedness of legionary soldiers in inscriptions is employed to identify public slaves (VI). Finally, findings are summarized and questions raised for future research.

Although Onesimus is the reason for Paul’s Letter to Philemon, he is only mentioned by name for the first time nearly halfway through the letter (v. 10). He also remains voiceless throughout the letter. This contribution focuses on the history of interpretation of the letter, and, in particular, the way in which the role of Onesimus has been interpreted through the centuries. Several examples of the way in which scholars interpreted the role of Onesimus are discussed, and it is argued that four broad trends may be discerned: Onesimus as a culprit who was saved by Paul; Onesimus as a pawn in the abolitionism debate; Onesimus’ status disputed, and Onesimus as a victim, with the letter being read in a resistant way.

This chapter explores slavery’s often unseen contributions to imperial Roman literary representations of elite men’s voluntary solitude at their villas, chiefly examining the villa-tours of Pollius Felix (Stat. Silv. 2.2) and Pliny the Younger (Ep. 2.17). The chapter argues that whether it is distanced, elided or displaced within the villa landscape, slavery helps define and facilitate the villa owner’s solitude. Even when it seems to disappear from or blend into the solitary landscape, slavery helps maintain the all-important sense of freedom and independence that he enjoys there, at the margins of a hierarchical society that threatened to render him figuratively servile. Thus, even as these accounts seek to accrue social distinction for their protagonists within Rome’s social hierarchies by lending them a solitary, independent pose ostensibly external to them, from a broader perspective, they reproduce these same hierarchies and reveal how far from external or marginal these men were to Roman society’s structures of power.

This chapter investigates the relation between gender and slavery among the Greeks and Romans. It considers the gendered division of labour for enslaved people with a special emphasis on enslaved females and female enslavers in the domestic context. Important topics covered include sexual violence against enslaved individuals, manumission, and prostitutes as enslaved. It argues that enslaved females were most common in domestic contexts and the sex and entertainment industry. Both contexts, however, meant that they were open to sexual abuse, but close contact with the free might also benefit enslaved women by leading to their manumission. Enslaved people frequently appear outside ancient constructions of gender, officially denied socio-political status as husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers, and free from behavioural expectations like male courage and female virtue; but this lack of a gendered identity was likely another element of their oppression.

PhD thesis investigating the process of enslaving war captives by the Romans and the extent and significance of this as a means of acquiring slaves within the growing slave economy in Italy and in the context of the changing geo-political environment of the wider Mediterranean from the early to mid-Republican periods.

This book is a life story of noble companion - Khabbab Ibn Al-Arat who was a slave worker of a cruel lady in Makkah. Khabbab, a master blacksmith, was not paid for the hardwork he did and was subject to all forms of torture and hardships. He used to ponder that the tyranny of that age needed someone to finish it forever. He waited for that dawn to come. His dream got fulfilled when Prophet Muhammad PBUH started his mission to abolish prevalent cruelty in society. When slaves were given high status in society based on their piety. The noble prophet PBUH declared that no black is superior to white and no white is superior to black. No arab is better than a non-arab and no non-arab is better than an arab. Status was only linked to peity and rightousness. Khabbab (ra) wholeheartedly accepted this message and make it a purpose of his life to take it to others. It is indeed an interesting life story of one of the greatest companions of our beloved Prophet Muhammad PBUH.

RE: Facades, illusions & ideological concepts created & promoted by ancient royalty out of necessity; effective creation of an alternate version of reality. It is only by knowing this information that the true nature of ancient texts may be understood correctly. Not knowing, means making incorrect assumptions & conclusions. Important!

In his Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae, Jerome describes the journey which he and Paula undertook from Rome to their eventual place of settlement in Bethlehem. The passage has often been studied in context of pilgrimage, and I recently analysed the segment looking for visual perception of the Mediterranean. However, what would the text reveal if one takes a different approach, namely by asking questions relating to the invisible servants, and especially the slave-girls that had no choice but to accompany their master or matron on such travels? These slaves are anonymised in a collective mass: anonymous and unanimous, a method not dissimilar to ‘grouping’ heretics into a unanimous collective under one label without individual nuances. Is it possible to reconstruct their lives and livelihoods? Take for example Paula’s servants: from the ‘comforts’ of a respectable domus in Rome, they were forced to embark on an arduous and challenging journey that would take them to the Holy Land, where they were to settle in a monastery. Monastic life (including virginity) was forced upon them. Yet, social hierarchy was preserved by having servants sleep in separate living quarters. In this paper, I wish to demonstrate how one could make visible these invisible servants and their possible experience of lived reality. A close reading of a selection of Jerome’s letters – notably his Epitaph on Paula, as well as letters to Eustochium, Demetrias, and Rusticus – will offer the possibility to hypothesise servant perspectives and experiences, rendering them visible, and making them just a little less anonymous.

This project examines the epigraphic, archaeological and literary evidence for slavery in first century CE Palestine. Detailed knowledge of slavery practices in this period is critical for the understanding of historical and religious texts of the second temple period, as slavery in Palestine differed from other parts of the empire. When taken together, extant evidence shows that first century Palestinian slavery served to reinforce the political, military and religious status quo by providing autonomy from the broader subjugated population.

En este trabajo argumento a favor de la conveniencia de abandonar el concepto de modo de producción esclavista para la historia de Roma, tanto en la república como en el imperio. Esto no implica desconocer la presencia de los esclavos, la apropiación de excedentes bajo la organización de un cierto tipo característico de institución, ni la evidencia de la explotación. Pero sí dejar de lado la idea de una « fase esclavista » para la historia de Roma, como fundamento económico explicativo de la organización social romana, centrado especialmente en el modelo de la villa de Columela. Aún cuando no será posible en el marco del presente artículo resolver esta problemática, baste señalar que partimos de la idea de que es necesario articular los factores económicos en el cuadro mayor de los elementos jurídicos y políticos que entendemos como dominantes para las formaciones sociales mediterráneas del período clásico.

The relationship between ‘blackness’ and ‘race’ in Greco-Roman antiquity is an important issue that has received far too little attention in recent discussions on race and ethnicity. This issue, though often marginalized, is of great significance to the study of Greco-Roman antiquity as it engages a divergence of issues which are discussed throughout this essay. The strengths and weaknesses of the old, but influential, studies on ‘blackness’ and recent discussions on Greco-Roman racial thought are meticulously examined. Also, major controversies surrounding the debate, such as the 'Egyptian race controversy' and the issue of Black identity and Slavery are addressed. Overall, this discussion  provides an in-depth analysis on Greco-Roman constructions of black identities, the extent of black social mobility and the complexity of anti-black racism. Ultimately, this discussion demands a re-thinking of the role of blackness in the Greco-Roman racial discourse.

There are so many areas which need to be studied when it comes to the First and Second Centuries of the Common Era, and so much more to learn about that time in history. If you read this paper and still wonder about various parts of it, it may mean that you need to do some reading to get caught up to where some of us already are.

Many within academia, for instance, still do not realize that when they are talking about the Jews of the time, they need to know exactly which 'Jews' they need to identify according to time, place and sect. This is important to better know what was being said by those recording both the Jewish historic material (i.e., the Talmud; 'Flavius Josephus' was not an actual 'Jew', but a Roman of Jewish descent).

This paper was written from the larger overview of an actual war going on at the time, instead of the view of isolated or sporadic Jewish "revolts". For more information about it being an actual long-standing war, read my other papers that cover the issue. A lot of material that that is necessary in order to uncover the fact of a genuine all-out war between the Romans and Jews can be deduced from items in the works of Flavius Josephus, various Roman authors, the Talmud, and the work of scholars such as Sir Ronald Syme, Joseph Neusner, and Abelard Reuchlin.

But, of course, you would have to read be at a level of study-ability that would allow you to know just what it is that you are reading. It is preferred that you know how to read the ancient texts involved in the original languages, using primary source documents and/or materials. When it comes to Classical material, the Loeb Classical Library edition is highly recommended. What must be known to reveal the truth about this long all-out war is that it did not begin with a disagreement between the Romans and Jews; it began with a split between the Jewish sects.