7/3/2023 0 Comments Rome instrumenta vocalia slave![]() ![]() Ordinary farm labourers might deliberately go slow on the job, or injure the animals they worked with to avoid work - or they might pretend to be ill, destroy equipment, or damage buildings. Those in positions of responsibility might falsify record books, and embezzle money from their owners, or arrange for their own manumission (setting free). ![]() Slaves, for example, might steal food or other supplies from the household. To many therefore it must have made sense not to risk life and limb by running away, but to carry out acts of wilful obstruction or sabotage that harmed slave-owners' interests at minimal risk to themselves. Slave-catchers apart, Roman law forbade the harbouring of fugitives, so slaves on the run were always in danger and if caught could be savagely punished. Running away was less dangerous than rebellion, but it was still a hazardous enterprise. Cicero used all his considerable influence to find the man, but to no avail: Dionysius slipped away across the Adriatic and is last heard of well out of Cicero's reach - somewhere in the Balkans. The great orator Cicero can be heard grumbling in his correspondence about a slave named Dionysius, who was well-educated enough to have supervised Cicero's personal library and who must have been relatively well-treated. And it helped that skin colour was no impediment. There is no way of knowing how many Roman slaves successfully escaped slavery by running away. Around the necks of slaves who were recovered they also attached iron collars, giving instructions on what to do with the slaves who wore them if they happened to escape again. To deal with the problem, the Romans hired professional slave-catchers to hunt down runaways, and posted advertisements in public places giving precise descriptions of fugitives and offering rewards for their capture. This suggests that the incidence of running away was always high. Romans labelled runaway slaves 'fugitives', and as the greatest modern historian of ancient slavery, Moses Finley, has remarked, 'fugitive slaves are almost an obsession in the sources'. One was to try to escape, either to return to an original homeland or simply to find safe refuge somewhere. There were other ways to alleviate the burdens of slavery. The law was enforced against those slaves who had not come to the victim's aid in this case, and all the slaves in the household - allegedly 400 of them - were executed, even though most of them could not possibly have known anything about the murder. Roman law required a man's slaves to come to his aid if he were attacked, under penalty of death. In the mid-first century AD an anonymous slave murdered his master, a high official in the imperial administration, either because the master had reneged on a promise to set the slave free or because the two were rivals in a sexual intrigue. He found, in other words, a way to assert himself, to exert power against the powerful, so that the asymmetrical roles of master and slave were suddenly inverted.Īt other times, slaves who were unable to tolerate their conditions assaulted their owners. They had the capacity to resist the absolute authority their owners formally exercised, and when Piso's slave crushingly embarrassed his master by obeying his instructions to the letter, for a moment (at least) he placed Piso in the inferior position that he normally occupied himself. But to outwit an owner as Piso's slave did was to win a victory in the game of psychological warfare that always existed between master and slave.įor unlike other forms of property, slaves were human beings with minds of their own, and they didn't always obey their owners as unthinkingly as they were supposed to. Technically Roman slaves were the property, the chattels, of their owners, held in a state of total subjection. It is a story that presupposes a constant tension between slave and master in the ancient Roman world, and is a striking illustration of how a lowly Roman slave could outwit his superior master. This anecdote was recorded, about AD 100, by the Greek moralist Plutarch. 'Then why didn't you tell me earlier? 'Because you didn't ask.' In despair Piso finally questioned the slave: 'Did you send Clodius an invitation?' 'Yes.' 'So why hasn't he come?' 'Because he declined'. So Piso sent the slave responsible for having invited the guest of honour to see where he was - several times - but still Clodius did not appear. At the appropriate time all the guests arrived except Clodius. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |