Roman Slavery

Question 1

What is a modern estimate of slaves in Italy at the close of the republic?

Answer 1

2,000,000

Question 2

What was the scale of slavery like in Rome compared to Greece?

Answer 2

Slavery was on a larger scale. The elite could own hundreds of slaves.

Question 3

What evidence is there of slavery in Rome being on a much larger scale?

Answer 3

Tacitus, Annals - We hear of L. Pedanius Secundus maintaining under Nero some 400 slaves in his urban residence alone.

Question 4

Was slave-owning confined to the very rich?

Answer 4

No - there is evidence to suggest that artisans in Roman Egypt regularly kept 2 or 3 slaves.

Question 5

Who could become a slave owner?

Answer 5

Both the elite and also ex-slaves.

Question 6

What was the main incentive to own slaves?

Answer 6

A mark of status

Question 7

How were slaves chiefly procured?

Answer 7

1. As captives in war
2. As victims of organised piracy and brigandage
3. Through natural reproduction
4. Through trade

Question 8

What was the result of the growth of the Roman empire in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC?

Answer 8

It produced vast numbers of prisoners who were transported as slaves to the Italian heartland.

Question 9

How was the ideology of slavery in Rome similar to that of Greece?

Answer 9

The Romans tended to shun enslavement of co-nationals, assimilating slavery to the ‘barbarian’ character of other people. Consequently, Syrians and Jews were peoples born for enslavement, though this was not racially grounded.

Question 10

What source describes the activities of the Cicilian pirates of the late Republic?

Answer 10

Strabo, Geography - These were notorious for discharging great quantities of enslaved victims in the port of Delos, where traders swiftly distributed them.

Question 11

What source suggests that piracy and brigandage were still rampant in late antiquity? And that the demand for slaves was still prevalent?

Answer 11

The Epistulae, St Augustine.

Question 12

How did natural reproduction contribute to the slave supply?

Answer 12

Children born to a slave mother (vernae) were typically themselves slaves.

Question 13

What source shows that slave-owners were even willing to encourage reproduction among slaves?

Answer 13

Columella, Res Rustica

Question 14

Despite slaves being present in almost every area of human activity, what is there an absence of?

Answer 14

Competition between slave and free labour. In fact it was conventional in some contexts e.g. manufacture. for slave and free to work side by side.

Question 15

Why was the rural slave presence very high in late republican Italy?

Answer 15

Due to the extensive development of slave-run latifundia consequent on the growth of the empire.

Question 16

What source attests this development of the latifundia in the late republic?

Answer 16

Appian, The Civil Wars

Question 17

Which source attests that the rural slave presence was still high under the Principate?

Answer 17

Columella, Res Rustica / On Agriculture

Question 18

What kind of labour continued in the empire?

Answer 18

1. Domestic labour
2. Dangerous and heavy exploitative work in the mines

Question 19

Which mines consumed human labour at a prodigious rate?

Answer 19

The gold and silver mines in Roman Spain.

Question 20

What did many of those slaves freed pay their owners for their freedom?

Answer 20

Their peculium / savings / pocket money.

Question 21

What kind of incentives were offered by slave owners to try and ensure conspicuous obedience?

Answer 21

Time off from work
Superior rations of food and clothing
Freedom

Question 22

Which sources describe the incentives offered to slaves to prevent resistance?

Answer 22

Varro, On Agriculture; Columella, On Agriculture; Xenophon, Oeconomicus; Aristotle, Oeconomicus

Question 23

What would happen if slaves did not acquiesce?

Answer 23

Physical coercion

Question 24

What is an example of an episode of open revolt?

Answer 24

The slave revolt led by Spartacus in Italy in the late 70s BC.

Question 25

What was the aim of Spartacus' revolt?

Answer 25

To extricate the disaffected from its rigours / to unsettle the dominant strata.

Question 26

Why was revolt a dangerous form of resistance?

Answer 26

It could jeopardise prospects of emancipation and the family relationships that slaves constructed (which would continue even after manumission).

Question 27

What were the more common forms of resistance?

Answer 27

Running away, playing truant, working inefficiently, pilfering or sabotaging property.

Question 28

What were stoic moralists actually concerned with?

Answer 28

The effects of slave-holding on the moral health of the slave-owners rather than the conditions under which the slaves lived.

Question 29

What did Roman legislation continue to do?

Answer 29

To perpetuate the slavery system as it was and did little to effect permanent improvement.

Question 30

What is the latin term of a slave / enslaved person?

Answer 30

servus / mancipium

Question 31

What is the latin term for someone who is free born?

Answer 31

ingenuus

Question 32

What is the latin term for a slave woman?

Answer 32

ancilla

Question 33

What is the latin term for a home-born slave?

Answer 33

verna

Question 34

Why is the slave called servus according to Florentinus in the Digest?

Answer 34

Because the generals in obtaining prisoners of war would sell and thereby preserve the individuals rather than killing them.

Question 35

Why is the slave called mancipiuim according to Florentinus in the Digest?

Answer 35

Because the slave is captive in the hand (manus) of their enemies.

Question 36

What is the slave in Rome?

Answer 36

An article of property held in ownership my a master (dominus).

Question 37

What does Florentinus say about the nature of humans in the Digest?

Answer 37

That all are naturally and that enslavement goes against nature.

Question 38

What is dominium?

Answer 38

The right of the dominus to use, abuse and sell the body of the slave.

Question 39

What are Finley's 3 criteria for a "Slave Society"?

Answer 39

1. Slaves = 20% or more of population. 2. Slaves must play a significant role in surplus production. 3. Slaves must be important enough to exercise a pervasive cultural influence.

Question 40

What are 4 problems with Finely's model of studying slavery?

Answer 40

1. Large focus on Western societies - ethnocentric. 2. Only 2 categories 3. Ambiguity around what defines a 'society' 4. Emphasises similarities between different SS but not differences.

Question 41

What 3 important things do we learn from the Twelve Tables (451-450 BC)?

Answer 41

1. Penalty of 300 pieces for breaking the bone of a freedman; 150 pieces if it is a slave. 2. Thieves who are free men may be flogged and adjudged while thieves who are slaves may be flogged and thrown from the Rock. 3. The inheritance of a citizen-freedman will be given to his patron is he died intestate and having no self-successor.

Question 42

What is the latin term for manumission?

Answer 42

libertus

Question 43

What sources do we have for Roman slavery?

Answer 43

- Literary sources (often derogatory) - Legal sources - Inscriptions, mainly funerary, from urban areas - Not much left behind from the slaves on estates though they were numerous

Question 44

What kind of slave system was in Rome?

Answer 44

An opened slave system - facilitated the integration of outsiders within the community.

Question 45

What does an inscription from Phillip II of Macedon remark about Roman attitude to slavery?

Answer 45

That the Romans allowed freed men a share in the magistracies.

Question 46

What are the main differences between slavery in Greece and Rome?

Answer 46

- Citizenship: Roman slaves could become citizens; very unique to all other slave societies in this respect. - Reversibility: Manumission in Rome was irreversible, while those freedmen in Greece could be re-enslaved.

Question 47

What are the 3 ways in which slaves could be manumitted according to Ulpian?

Answer 47

1. By the authority of an official - by vindicta / a fictitious court procedure - where the ceremony is performed before a magistrate. 2. By the census: Master asks for the slave to be enrolled; can only happen every 5 years. 3. By will - has to be ratified by a magistrate.

Question 48

What source describes the informal liberation of slaves?

Answer 48

Pliny, Letters

Question 49

How might slaves be informally manumitted? (where they do not acquire citizenship)

Answer 49

- Amongst friends (see Ulpian, Rules) - By letter - By banquet

Question 50

What are features of those formally freed?

Answer 50

1. Gained citizenship 2. Entered into the manumittor's family; became a part of the gens of the manumittor. 3. Liable to obsequium and operae (dutiful respect and services). 4. Former owners became the patrons of the freedmen.

Question 51

What would happen to freedmen who did not fulfil obsequium according to the Digest?

Answer 51

The freedman could be reprimanded, flogged or subject to other punishment. It can then be inferred that they could not be re-enslaved.

Question 52

What are the similarities between Greek and Roman manumission?

Answer 52

- Services and obligations post-manumission. - Exchange of money - having to pay peculium for their freedom.

Question 53

What are the motives behind manumission?

Answer 53

1. Collective identity 2. Manumitted slaves would work in the non-liberal arts which acted as a catalyst for commerce, manufacturing and trade which the elite could benefit from without being personally involved (since it was seen as below them). 3. Slaves were also expensive to keep, so it was useful to manumit slaves once they were no longer at their peak age of productivity. 4. Persistence of ties with the oikos and familia meant that the master could still benefit from the services of the freedman. 5. Master would gain money from manumission which they could invest in the purchase of new slaves. 6. The prospect of manumission would incentivise the slaves to work harder which would be of benefit to the slave master.

Question 54

What is important to remember about the status of freedmen?

Answer 54

- That their legal freedom did not necessarily coincide with social equality. - Their position in society may have been something in between slave and free.