How to Tell a Slave

After pointing out the significant differences between ancient slavery and modern racialized slavery, this chapter considers the manifold difficulties entailed in distinguishing between enslaved and free persons in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. It stresses the social, economic, and legal importance of maintaining these distinctions even as it acknowledges their elusive nature. It goes on to describe the ways in which behaviours, bodies—often scarred or tattooed, sometimes tortured—dress, disguise, names, and language, revealed or disguised the status of enslaved persons. It ends with a brief discussion of a dramatic text that stages the complexities of policing the boundaries between enslaved and free persons.

Literary Evidence

This chapter examines the use and usefulness of evidence from ancient fiction for the study of slavery. Although these forms of literature tend to portray slavery and enslaved characters in extreme terms, inseparable from the slave owners’ perspective, they provide evidence for the diverse experiences and expectations of slaves as well as for attitudes towards slaves, enslavement, and the conditions of slavery. The chapter surveys literature in which enslaved characters are unusually salient—Homeric epic, Greek and Roman drama, and the ancient novels—and stresses the tension between the degradation of the enslaved body and the usefulness of the autonomous and rational person.

Literary Evidence

Information about slaveries in Greek and Roman antiquity appears in almost all genres of non-fiction: histories, biographies, political and philosophical treatises, speeches, letters, agricultural manuals, and works on estate management. The amount of surviving evidence, however, is comparatively small and unrepresentative, produced by slave owners with typically little interest in slaves for their own sake. There are no surviving non-fiction literary accounts by slaves. Even when slavery is discussed, it is often only ancillary to other issues. The evidence therefore leaves serious gaps in our knowledge. Ancient accounts also often fail to mention slaves who were almost certainly present, or mention them only in passing. One compensation is that non-fiction works do shed light on how writers view slaves in contexts in which they are not trying to prove anything, in contrast to accounts in which slavery and slaves form the direct focus, accounts probably subject to more distortion.

Chattel Slaveries in Classical Greece

Greek chattel or commercial slavery developed from general growth and sophistication of economic activity in emerging city-state culture. At Athens and elsewhere, non-commercial forms of slavery evanesced. As the supply of Greek slaves lessened for economic and ideological reasons, Greeks began to acquire slaves almost exclusively from non-Greek peoples. Slaves were considered private property but, as Aristotle argued, they were also considered ‘animate tools’, a category marking distinction from other animal property. Athenian slaves could enjoy a measure of behavioural latitude, some protection from arbitrary violence, and in some ways participated in the wider polis. However, exploitation was normal (sometimes with abuse) and constituted the essence of the slave system. Slave labour was prominent in the classical Greek economy, as slaves were numerous. Finally, although manumission was possible and perhaps frequent, complete integration into wider society was limited at Athens.

Slaves and Religion

From accounts of the legal status of Greek and Roman slaves, you might infer that they would have had no place at all in the religious life of the pagan communities where they were held. For many, this must have been true; but this chapter examines the various contexts in which there is evidence of slaves performing rituals, taking vows, paying for monuments, and the like. The argument is made that this range of activity should be seen as part of the opportunities open to privileged slaves, who were able both in Athens and through the Roman Empire to earn money, run businesses, and act as agents for their owners. Finally, the question is raised how the coming of Christianity affected the position and welfare of slaves.

Manumission, Citizenship, and Acculturation in the Roman World

This chapter examines the manumission and acculturation of freedpersons in the Roman world, especially through the lens of citizenship and community building. It analyses how the long-standing practice of granting citizenship to freed slaves shaped the institution of manumission in general as well as the specific factors contributing to the decision to manumit individual slaves. Finally, it examines the means by which freed slaves were incorporated in the civic community. While Roman law marked freedpersons as a lesser category of citizens, denying them access to the highest echelons of Roman society, it still accorded them important rights and abilities that made them more similar to fellow citizens than distinct.

Slaves and the Roman Economy

This chapter presents an economic view of Roman slavery and the modern literature about it. The chapter starts by defining slavery and distinguishing positive and negative incentives to work. Roman slavery was ‘open’, while United States slavery was ‘closed’. The related roles of manumission, education, and skills are discussed and evaluated. The chapter considers Roman slavery as part of the Roman labour force, and combines imprecise estimates by various ancient historians into a rough idea of the magnitude of Roman slavery. Finally, Roman slavery continued into the imperial decline. There are three overall lessons. First, economic analysis adds to our understanding of ancient slavery. Second, Roman slavery was nothing like United States slavery. Third, slaves were less than one-quarter of the Roman labour force in the Principate and less than that both earlier and later.

Patronage and Slavery in the Roman World: The Circle of Power

From a patron’s vantage point, slaves, freedmen, clients, and parasites constituted his circle of power. The power an aristocrat had was measured by the number and quality of people belonging to it, and by their status. The composition of this circle changed over time: the proud aristocracy of the Roman Republic, which had ample powers over its dependants, was replaced under the Empire by a ‘service aristocracy’ which had to tolerate imperial meddling into its domestic affairs. Imperium (command) was replaced by beneficium (favour) as the catchword of the time. The most important of all beneficia, manumission, contributed to enhancing and completing the aristocratic circle of power.

Slave Trade, Manumission, and Citizenship in Ancient Rome and Brazil: A Comparative Perspective

The chapter analyses in a comparative way the interconnectedness between slave trade, manumission, and the granting of citizenship to former slaves in Roman and Brazilian slave societies. Due to the absence of a strict line of continuity between the Roman and modern worlds, the comparison is made mainly in formal terms. While Brazilian slavery was part of a capitalist world economy where slave trade and anti-slavery ideologies coexisted, Roman slavery developed in the Mediterranean area where slavery and other forms of compulsory labour were never subjected to anything but occasional criticism. Although placed in different material, political, and ideological contexts, both slave societies followed similar paths that show the necessity of an examination of the long-term interconnection of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic world systems and its multiple layers of time.

The End of Enslavement, ‘Greek style’

This chapter examines the processes through which slaves in ancient Greek communities exited slavery, as well as their status and condition as freed people. It examines the nature of the existing evidence for manumission and freed people and its implications for studying the topic; it explores the forms of manumission and the processes through which slaves managed to gain their freedom; finally, it discusses the meanings that freedom had for freed people in the various conditions in which they found themselves after exiting slavery. The chapter places particular attention on the significance of the master–slave, free–slave, and community formation dialectics for manumission and for life after slavery. It also engages with fruitful comparisons between different areas and communities of the Greek world, as well as between Greek and Roman manumission and freed people.