Talk:Slavery in ancient Rome

Wiki Education assignment: Pompeii and the Cities of Vesuvius

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2022 and 12 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Pompeii 315 (article contribs).

Pompeii 315 I will also be working on this page in the coming weeks. The section on Freedmen in particular needs a major overhaul. If this is a topic you are covering in detail, please get in touch. NChapman98 (talk) 16:09, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

@NChapman98 The Freedmen section is a topic I am covering because as you may have noticed it needs a lot of work. As of now I am both trying to add more sources and rewording a lot of it so it has a little more flow and makes more sense. Pompeii 315 (talk) 23:13, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

@Pompeii 315 I had noticed that. Ultimately, I chose to write an entirely new article for Roman Freedmen, but the section in the main article still needs attention. Should you be looking for sources, my bibliography from the new article may prove useful. Best of luck! NChapman98 (talk) 13:54, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Power

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2022 and 12 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): NChapman98 (article contribs).

Illustrating the article

I'm reluctant to intrude since the article has been developed as an educational project and I haven't been editing WP much the last few years. But the two modern images that are in the article are problematic as illustrations of the topic historically. I'm all for illustrating the classical tradition in articles about Greece and Rome, if the actual content of the article supports and contextualizes these representations. But currently there is no section, as there well could be, on the intellectual and artistic purposes to which notions of slavery in ancient Rome were put, especially in the US.

If you skim through the article on Jean-Léon Gérôme, you'll see that the painter has a number of paintings showing his preoccupation with the shapely, luminously white-skinned lone woman standing naked in public and gazed upon by fully clothed, more darkly shaded men. What he seems interested in is locating scenarios that lend a veneer of narrative plausibility and variety to a scene he wants to paint over and over. Compositionally, the image of the supposed Roman slave market chosen here is scarcely to be distinguished from several other of his paintings, and that lack of specificity is part of what makes it not useful here. If there were a section on later depictions, I would have no objection to the image if it were related to the content.

The other painting by Charles W. Bartlett has more utility. The architecture says Rome. Although women and children are foregrounded, perhaps for pathos, the painter includes stripped men as well. The central image is the kindly (!) Roman soldier handing fruit to the child about to be sold into slavery. He stands in contrast to the spear-bearing soldier pushing that poor fellow along at the top of the stairs. There are many ways to interpret this; perhaps the painter is saying that even when we live in times when our livelihood depends on atrocity as daily commerce, there's redemption in a moment of kindness. The contemporary viewer's response is likely to be more complicated.

Those are my views on why neither of these images belongs near the top of the article. I'm intending to delete Gérôme's and move Bartlett's to that position. There are extensive options for illustrating the article with Roman art and inscriptions. And an even more interesting point is that while visual art in antiquity was commissioned by the ruling class or bought by the well-to-do, many if not most artists and artisans were slaves or freedmen creating images of themselves, as in possibly the mosaic at the top. Cynwolfe (talk) 01:12, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for doing that and for the clear and compelling explanation – welcome back! If it's any reassurance or encouragement, the 2022 educational projects resulted in two edits here, this to the text and references of the section on freedmen and this linking to a new article Ancient Roman freedmen.

NebY (talk) 12:25, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm quite out of practice editing at WP. There's one other point I hope to address, the recent addition of a sentence stating that it was against the law to erect a funerary stone for slaves, when in fact we have an image of an actual inscription commemorating Eros the cook—explicitly a servus, not even a libertinus or libertus. I don't think the source is quite as emphatic as the assertion placed in the article, but burial practice with commemoration is a terrific question to raise. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:15, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

It surprised me too (but only after you pointed it out) and I qualified it per the quote from the source "no siempre respetada, es cierto".[1] I'm wondering when it was in force, if it applied in Rome as well as that part of Hispania, whether it applied to columbaria inscriptions, which I'd thought a major source and object of study – but I'm basically ignorant. Still I know who has done a lot of careful work here on Roman funerary practices – pinging Haploidavey! NebY (talk) 17:44, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, though I can't offer much, as I've limited access to relevant works I used in the Roman funerary practices article (see that article's sources). Off the top of my head, however, I've come across no support at all for a legal or customary prohibition of monuments to slaves, many of whom seem to have had better funerary treatments and memorials than the poorest of their urban citizen counterparts, with access to Columbaria and other mausolea.

It seems possible to me that whoever inserted the "no monuments" claim has based it on a misreading of contracts between undertakers and town councils at Puteoli and Lanuvium. They were obliged to remove and dispose of any corpses of slaves, the poorest citizens, or the indigent who had been dumped on the streets, within two hours of discovery (or daylight). They were disposed as garbage (a public nuisance), without ceremony or memorial. If at all possible, the responsible owners or relatives were fined.

Cicero confirms that funerals for most non-elite citizen corpses were carried out over 24 hours. Many of these would have been funded by burial associations, who were able to take slaves as members, with permission of their owners, and give their members burial with an image (in other words, a memorial) even as slaves.

In many cases, families and deceased patrons of deceased slaves and freedmen who were considered loyal could add their names to existing memorial inscriptions; good examples survive in Aquilea.

Graham, Emma-Jayne, The burial of the urban poor in Italy in the late Roman Republic and early Empire. BAR Int. Series 1565. Oxford, Archaeopress, 2006

Bendlin, Andreas, "Associations, funerals, sociality, and Roman law: The collegium of Diana and Antinous in Lanuvium (CIL 14.2112) reconsidered", 2011

(Huge numbers of rural slaves would have been buried by fellow slaves with only a perishable monument, such as a name scratched into an amphora that covered their corpse or ashes. Eros the cook is by no means exceptional; lots more where that came from). There are variations in local municipal law, but if this is one, the source should describe it as such, with reference to a primary source. Haploidavey (talk) 12:27, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

All things considered, I don't think we should accept the offered source as reliable or accurate: Arturo Pérez (2006). Balcells, Albert (ed.). Historia de Cataluña (in Spanish) (1.ª ed.). Madrid.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Haploidavey (talk • contribs) 13:56, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! "Can't offer much", indeed. I'm reassured that all in all, if there is some narrow sense in which "forbidden to place a tombstone at a slave's grave" is true, it's still too much of a potentially misleading statement and that source simply isn't sufficient for a general statement here. NebY (talk) 20:31, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

So I thought. For further relevant, sourced material in support of our arguments, here's a courtesy link to Wikipedia's article on Roman funerary practices. Haploidavey (talk) 08:25, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

The contracts between undertakers and town councils at Puteoli and Lanuvium (an amazing thing to learn of!) in fact would seem to indicate expectations that slaveholders bore responsibility for at least handling the remains appropriately. Those subject to damnatio of whatever kind are always going to be a special case, whether it's one condemned to the mines or Mark Antony. Cynwolfe (talk) 20:04, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Selling your children

We have "There were also many cases of poor people selling their children to richer neighbours as slaves in times of hardship." in the lead, but nothing of the sort in the body. The ref was added recently in response to Cynwolfe's citation-needed tag; it's to a PBS page that cites no sources and may post-date this statement being in this article. The phrasing is a bit off, making me think of taking the kid round to the Joneses next door, but we could fix that if we had a good source. I couldn't find anything in the odd bits and pieces I've got on ancient slavery, and I'm not convinced it was even legal after nexum (which wasn't exactly slavery anyway). A quick online search threw up this on Stackexchange, where the extended answer (not the brief footnoted ones) presents modern RSs that Roman liberty was inalienable, even under potestas, but goes on to assert without sources that parents did often put their children to work like slaves. I don't know what the economic value of child slaves in pre-industrial societies is, let alone ones that might reclaim their liberty. Surely if everyone knows this was common, we must have better sources than PBS. NebY (talk) 20:35, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

It shouldn't be in the lead in any case, as the lead should summarise the main and not have novel information. If a proper summary, the lead would also not need references. It is not at all clear why the statement is lead worthy. Regarding the veracity of the statement, it doesn't seem obviously true, for the reasons you have stated. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 20:58, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Good points about the lede and about nexum. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:36, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

After a quick look into this, I think what's needed is a section on child slavery, which would explain how children became slaves and the difference between being born into slavery and becoming a slave. It doesn't appear that children under five were expected to be used as slaves, but it also isn't clear to me how childcare was handled if the mother was enslaved. And if a free woman or a household couldn't afford that extra mouth to feed, child abandonment seems more likely? But children from the ages of 7 to 14 did do work if they couldn't be in school. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:52, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

We have a WP:RS (PBS), and yet the opinions of wikipedia editors I'm not convinced and it doesn't seem obviously true are to outweigh the RS? Amusing. Agree that a section is needed; I've started adding extra sources for when the subject is moved into main text.XavierItzm (talk) 16:11, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Concerning the sale of children, your quote from Harris ("infants […] would have been sold. Sometimes in fact they were […despite…] inhibition in the way of selling a child of citizen") doesn't fully convey Harris's caution:

"It has been objected that infants would not have been exposed in great numbers if they were valuable as potential recruits to the slave market; they would have been sold. Sometimes in fact they were. But at times demand must have been weak or non-existent. However even when children did possess some commercial value, there was a powerful inhibition in the way of selling a child of citizen parents. That was precisely what could not be allowed to happen to a member of the citizen community. At least some Greeks felt that the selling of children was more abhorrent than exposing them."

It's good to see a better source; that PBS page doesn't meet WP:SCHOLARSHIP. NebY (talk) 16:49, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Three things. (1) Can we remove PBS since we have a more reliable source? So as not to encourage this kind of sourcing? (2) And in my opinion, a reasonable place to add a heading "Child slavery" would be after "Debt slavery," because tied to poverty. (3) And a talk page is a talk page—a place to brainstorm. None of us added our opinions to the article. My "quick look into" this topic was a survey of abstracts of several articles on JSTOR from journals on ancient history and classical studies. A little good faith, please. Though I'm always glad to bring amusement to the world. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:19, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Also, I'm not saying that PBS isn't RS! It certainly is on current affairs. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:49, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

I have removed the PBS source. As NebY says, that source does not meet WP:SCHOLARSHIP, and the Harris source is better (although it pretty much gives the lie to the old text). Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 18:14, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Agree. On the first page of the article, Harris says, "After the sale of infants was authorized by Constantine in A.D. 313, the need for child-exposure somewhat diminished, and at last—probably in 374—it was subjected to legal prohibition. But of course it did not cease." That's a rather late date—AD 313, and notably under the first Christian emperor (post-"conversion," even)—to support a claim that selling your own children was recognized or accepted as standard practice in "ancient Rome" and all the preceding centuries we mean by that. The selling of your own children into slavery would seem to have become palatable as a matter of law only when the empire began to be fully Christianized. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:30, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

That is so startling. Isn't ancient history great?

Meanwhile, I'll replace "Poor citizens might sell their children as slaves, or, more frequently, abandon them for slave traders to pick up" with "Abandoned infants who survived exposure were usually enslaved" as that's what Harris is telling us so clearly and directly that we don't even need to assemble a quotation from him to support it.

To explain at tedious length (sorry!): Harris's "sometimes they were [sold]" doesn't indicate that selling one's own children was so common as to be worth noting here; indeed, he argues that it was not be a common choice instead of exposure. He doesn't say parents exposed children in order that they could be enslaved; rather (p9) "enslavement was much the commonest fate of foundlings" (only foundlings, not all the abandoned) but (p10) "the majority of the victims [of exposure] probably died", "even the rescued were in great danger, for like the inmates of the old foundling hospitals they must often have died within a few days", "[a]t all events, it was widely assumed that most exposed infants died", and more. NebY (talk) 20:38, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

References

Outline structure

I took some steps toward what I hope to be a more topical approach. Defining the legal status of the servus is critical in understanding the Roman institution, and what's most distinctive in Roman society is the role of freedmen. Without that kind of structure, the article risks devolving into a list of grievances about how awful slavery was. I'm confident that we all know slavery is wrong. One problem in trying to improve this article is that if the structure isn't solid, you end up with recursive portions and leaping around randomly. (And one problem with casual contributors is that they tend to drop their info as early as possible into the article instead of looking at where it most logically or topically fits.)

One section that I saw a need for is to answer the question "Who were the enslaved?/Where did slaves come from?" in a more cohesive way, which had been covered in the non-sequential "Slavery and warfare," "Auctions and sales," and "Debt slavery." So I consolidated that under "The slave trade," though much work still needs to be done. The vernae need their own section too. The needed section "Children as slaves" would follow "Debt slavery.

And as always in these broad articles about "ancient Rome" spanning a thousand years or more, generalizations inserted by well-meaning contributors often fail to distinguish between practices in the semilegendary Regal period and early Republic (for which most evidence comes, often nostalgically, from the late Republican writers), the middle, best-documented period from the Punic Wars through Constantine, and the later imperial period characterized by the rise of Christianity. So every overview section probably needs to follow either some kind of early-middle-late chronological developmental structure, or organization according to status of the enslaved—differences, for example, between those condemned to slavery and those reared in slavery but given a high degree of education or training and agency, most famously Tiro. There's still stuff scattered, but I'm not one to complain without pitching in and getting my hands dirty, so all discussion is welcome. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:32, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

So good to see. Yes, we badly need to be clear that practices, and laws too, went through changes. Thanks too for the stucture of the slave trade section (I left abandonment with nexum only as a rough temporary grouping of two ways freeborn Romans might be enslaved). I've realised we say nothing there about import from outside Rome's hegemony. McKeown says Scheidel estimates imports to be quite minor and that Harris criticises that, but I don't know if they're talking about the full Empire or including the period before Rome controlled the eastern Mediterranean. NebY (talk) 15:52, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Harris and Scheidel had quite a scholarly feud going on this topic, it seems. To my mind, nothing renders an article that's of interest to the general reader more unreadable than "he said, she said" scholarship! So I hope we can find a way to dodge that. Generally, though (and I did see a good summation of this somewhere that I'll try to locate), there's consensus on where enslaved people come from (and agree, trade across the frontiers should be added)—just not on the proportions of the slave population each source contributed. Especially since it changes over time. After receiving a certain amount of scholarly excoriation, Harris later steps back somewhat on his speculation about how great a source of slaves child exposure was (child exposure being his actual topic), though standing by it to some degree.

BTW, do you know the established era-designation style for this article? I've been totally random depending on the source. Cynwolfe (talk) 00:02, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I feel for our sort of overview we want to indicate which were the major sources, fascinating though the debate may be (your welcome summaries and citations in the article and news about Harris could utterly distract me).

The first era designation I've found is BC in 2007,[2] though my sampling might have missed one if it was quickly removed. In 2011 a little BCE/CE is added but by then there are several more BC/ADs. NebY (talk) 13:14, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I remember participating in extraordinarily heated debates over era conventions ten to fifteen years ago, and I absolutely do not care, except for consistency of copyediting. Well, and on grounds of disruption when someone who hasn't been contributing to an article drops by just to "make a point". And when people who don't contribute to articles that move back and forth from the 2nd/1st century BC/BCE and 1st/2nd century AD/CE insist that you can't use AD/CE even to make it clear to readers what century we're in, if there are still warriors who do that. I marginally prefer BC/AD just because as symbols they read as more sharply differentiated, but again, not something I care about. I am happy to go through and render the eras consistently if we have a consensus, as I have been dropping in text and captions willy-nilly with the era convention in the source and am undoubtedly the primary befouler. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:16, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, one of the eternal debates. I think, on the evidence, it should be BC/AD. I also don't have strong feelings, but I think a change to first page usage should be based on some kind of evidence (e.g. that the vast majority of papers and histories on the subject are using CE/BCE). Absent that, I think first page usage has it. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 17:06, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! When I have a minute when I want to do something that isn't mentally taxing, I'll go through and fix this, since I'm pretty sure I've done the major mucking up. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:39, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Great! I no longer have a preference, just whatever keeps the truce and can be quickly explained to new editors set on changing all Wikipedia's instances of this to that, or vice versa. Curiously, WP:ERA says "an article's established era style" rather than "first" as in other matters, which keeps surprising me. So I'll document it here just in case: it was swapped to BCE/CE on 9 January 2014, then back to BC/AD on 19 September 2018, both times with no discussion before or afterwards. If it was ever switched to BCE/CE again, that didn't last for any appreciable time, at the end of 2022 there was only one stray instance of BCE/CE in the article, and it only has 6 now, oops, none, sorry. NebY (talk) 00:51, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Revolving stands

I've found a reference we could use for "sometimes slaves stood on revolving stands", but should we? Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities (1898) has for Catasta "A raised platform upon which slaves were exposed for sale, so that the intending purchasers might more readily examine their points (Tibull. ii. 3, 60; Pers. vi. 77). The platform was sometimes made to revolve, as appears from Statius ( Silv. ii. 1 Silv., 72)...."[3] The Statius line (Silvae 2.1.72) is "non te barbaricae versabat turbo catastae"[4] - very very roughly, "the storm/spinning-top of the barbaric sale-platform was not turning you". I can't judge whether Statius is being literal, metaphorical ("rota fortunae" became a cliché), or even merely describing slaves being made to turn around, but I've tried looking for other mentions of the catasta and keep failing to find mention of it turning. Sandra Joshel, for example, mentions the catasta several times in chapter 4, The Sale of Slaves, in her Slavery in the Roman World, describing quite vividly how slaves were presented on it, but without ever mentioning it revolving. Is it worth including something so weakly attested that others omit it? NebY (talk) 15:33, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't have a strong opinion on this but agree that the turning is possibly a poetic trope (ha, pardon the pun). Sometimes the old reference works have these little nuggets, though, that no one's paid attention to since. Would be nice if another secondary source turns up. Cynwolfe (talk) 00:20, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

(Oh well played.) Yes, and I'll keep an eye out. For now, I'm inclined to drop it into a footnote rather than start the sentence with something uncertain and tagged, when the following can be fairly easily referenced - which I could make a start on too, though not immediately. NebY (talk) 12:43, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Emancipation - heading or anchor

We currently have a subsection heading Emancipation, followed by a sentence explaining that emancipatio had nothing to do with slavery in ancient Rome. We keep the heading because a hidden note explains "Please keep this subheading. Other articles link to it, and its meaning is precise." That note was placed in 2010[5], when another editor had tried changing the heading to Freedom. The section now concerns manumission, an even more precise term. Should we place a hidden {{Anchor}} for emancipation, {{Anchor|Emancipation}}, there and rename the section Manumission? Incoming links would still work and we wouldn't have to start with a digression. NebY (talk) 18:36, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

 Done NebY (talk) 18:10, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Rebellions or revulsion

Wondering if we mentioned the time Roman crowds delayed the execution of four hundred slaves, I was surprised to find the case of Lucius Pedanius Secundus in #Rebellions instead, along with that of Larcius Macedo. The former was killed by a single slave; the killers of the latter fled but didn't raise a revolt. Our source, Bradley, mentions both as examples of "smaller outbursts of violence from slaves against masters", supporting his argument that the Sicilian uprisings were not "intended to be massive from the outset" but grew from such small-scale acts of desperation; he himself doesn't call those two events uprisings, though we do.

Emma Southon describes the case of Pedanius Secundus as "one of those moments with Tacitus where he presents a behaviour as stupid and laughable to his Roman aristocratic audience and assumes they'll agree with him but which modern audiences read entirely differently." A riot besieged the Senate, then with stones and torches delayed the execution. Nero rebuked them by edict and had troops line the route, but mercifully vetoed the expulsion of Pedanius' freedmen (three years previously in 58, says Southon, the law requiring the death of the slaves had been renewed to include the death of the freedmen). Mouritsen mentions the event as an example of "anecdotal evidence for solidarity between freedmen (even slaves) and the rest of the plebs".

We mention panic among slaveholders but not that popular response. Would it be appropriate to mention it there or even mention the murders and executions under a different heading (presumably much more briefly than this)? NebY (talk) 20:27, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

References

Female slaves and manumission

This edit and the preceding text reminded me of a quandary mentioned by Marc Kleijwegt, more clearly attested in New World slavery, that "most masters were reluctant to free entire family units" so women who might otherwise be happy to accept freedom had to leave others behind. Evidence is doubly scant, of course. As for Laes's survey showing "more than 30 percent of women traded were of prime childbearing age (20 to 25)", I can't help wondering (I don't have access) if perhaps it was 30+% of trades instead, suggesting some were acquired for the short term and resold. NebY (talk) 20:01, 1 September 2023 (UTC)