The Bitter Chain of Slavery: Reflections on Slavery in Ancient Rome | Page 4

side, and it is to this darker side
that I now want to turn, asking especially how slavery might have been
fully experienced within the domestic context about which so much
seems knowable. My intent is not at all to dispute the views of the
contemporary scholars to whom I have just referred, but to point to the
complexities of Roman slavery as I understand them. The question
raises methodological issues. There are no extended accounts from
slaves themselves to allow the historian a direct view of life in slavery,
and much simply has to be inferred from sources that represent (and
perhaps continually influenced and shaped) the attitudes and ideology
of the slaveowning classes. These sources are primarily literary
--sometimes imaginative and sometimes anecdotal -- of a sort that

historians of modern slavery systems would often dismiss as of
minimal value. But there is scarcely any alternative. Epitaphs and legal
sources are immensely important, but they are by themselves
insufficient; and epitaphs, especially, cannot be expected to reveal
much that is critical of slavery when they celebrate for the most part
individuals who found ways to achieve some sort of conventional
success in life. In what follows, therefore, I offer a set of inferential
observations from my reading of certain literary authors of the
Principate, who allow, I believe, credible glimpses of life in slavery
that stand in strong contrast to what has been seen so far.
The first point to emphasise is one that slavery historians, especially
modern slavery historians, have always known, namely that slavery in
Roman antiquity was not a soulless legal condition--a point of view
common in legal studies of Roman slavery--but a human relationship in
which slave and master were always inextricably bound together. The
relationship was obviously asymmetrical, comparable according to the
third-century Greek author Philostratus (Life of Apollonius of Tyana
7.42) to that between a tyrant and his subjects. But it was not
completely one-sided. In theory the slave was powerless: No slave is
really happy,' the Hellenized Jew Philo wrote, 'For what greater misery
is there than to live with no power over anything, including oneself?'
(Every Good Man is Free 41), and the slave was always subject to
constraint, so that the medical authority Celsus could write (On
Medicine 3.21.2) that a slave habituated to a life of compulsion endured
the harsh treatment needed to cure an illness more eaily than the free.
Yet because slaves were a human form of property, human agency
could and did manifest itself in the relationship from moment to
moment. Unlike the animals to which they were often compared, slaves
were not easily manipulable, but had to be managed with thought and
discretion to make sure that they did what was required of them and to
prevent 'criminal' acts of the sort to which Salvian was still sensitive in
late antiquity. The relationship therefore was one that on both sides
involved constant adjustment, refinement, and negotiation. Some slaves,
sure enough, enjoyed a privileged status in their households. Those
who were stewards or managers of estates or supervisors of lowlier
slaves or chaperons of their masters' wives and orphaned children held

positions of authority because they were trustworthy and so resembled
the free; and yet, as Philo said in the same work (35), whatever
influence these slaves had they remained slaves regardless and to that
extent they could never be free from the constricting tie to those who
owned them and the struggle for power the tie involved.
My point is well illustrated by an anecdote from Plutarch (Moralia
511D-E) concerning the consul of 61 BC, Marcus Pupius Piso. As
follows: The orator Piso, wishing to avoid being unnecessarily
disturbed, ordered his slaves to answer his questions but not add
anything to their answers. He then wanted to give a welcome to
Clodius, who was holding office, and gave instructions that he should
be invited to dinner. He set up a splendid feast. The time came, the
other guests arrived, Clodius was expected. Piso kept sending the slave
who was responsible for invitations to see if he was coming. Evening
came; Clodius was despaired of. 'Did you invite him?' Piso asked his
slave. 'Yes.' 'Then why didn't he come?' 'Because he declined.' 'Then
why didn't you tell me?' 'Because you didn't ask.' Such is the way of the
Roman slave! An anecdote like this, as everyone will be aware, cannot
be taken at face value, as if literally true. It is what the story symbolises
that is important: the fact that at any time any slave at Rome had the
potential to challenge the authority the slaveowner commanded, which
means accordingly that the relationship between slave and master
always implicated the energies of both sides in a never-ending struggle
for supremacy, and clearly it was not always