The Roman Guide to Slave Management (6 page)

But how can we fight the riches that fate has sent us? Perhaps we shall just have to accept that it is written in the stars that we Romans are destined to rule the world. We cannot avoid owning slaves. At the very least you should display your ambivalence about owning slaves in the names that you chose for them. Pick a cheerful name or one that means something to you, such as the place where you bought him, or a name imbued with some dry humour to show that you do not take seriously the benefits that fortune has chosen to send your way. For example, I once bought a slave, at no inconsiderable cost, who on his journey to my urban villa fell and broke his arm. I called him Lucky.

   COMMENTARY   

Most of the details regarding the purchase of slaves come from the urban environment where a master was generally buying a small number of slaves. The fact that these slaves lived under the same roof as the master and were used to provide personal services to him and his family means that it was
likely that great care was taken over their selection. It was probably different in the country. Particularly in large estates, such detailed examinations may not have been the norm and it probably fell to the estate manager to buy the slaves. Obviously, the size of a master’s household and estates will have dictated the degree of his personal involvement in making slave purchases.

The availability of slaves will have affected the care that buyers took in their selections. In periods after great Roman military victories, when the supply of new slaves was plentiful, prices can be expected to have fallen and buyers probably relaxed their watchfulness.

A freeborn Roman citizen could not legally forfeit his or her legal status without consent. But it was a sad fact of social life in the Roman world that many freeborn children were abandoned by their parents who either could not afford to bring them up or simply did not want to. Those who did not die of exposure to the elements or from being eaten by dogs could be picked up by slave dealers and surrogate parents and raised as foundlings. These children effectively became the slaves of their new guardians. Even though it was a common mechanism in theatrical plots for such abandoned children to be rediscovered by their real parents, it is safe to assume that this was a rare occurrence.

It is actually unclear whether the Romans actively bred their slaves. Slave reproduction happened naturally, given that they were often allowed to form relationships. The master seems to have been expected to give his approval for such partnerships, but the extent of his involvement in pairing slaves off is unknown. If the
master was consulted, it is reasonable to assume that he would have wanted to prevent an alliance between two troublesome slaves, but that is a long way from saying that he sought to manage his slave stock by selecting well-built and healthy slaves as partners for each other. Masters also indulged in sexual activity with their slaves, which, if female slaves were involved, also resulted in servile pregnancies. These offspring were legally slaves, even though the master was the father.

Prices for slaves need to be treated with caution. They are estimates based on a small body of surviving examples. Nominal prices rose during the later empire because of inflation but it is unclear whether prices increased in real terms. It is certainly not possible to see any decline in the total slave population of the later empire, either as a result of possible economic decline or Christianity’s greater influence. Records of the dramatically high prices of slaves such as Mark Antony’s ‘twins’ have survived because of their extreme nature. It is impossible to draw any conclusions about more average prices from this. What can be concluded about prices more generally is that they were both high and varied. It cost about 500 sesterces per year to feed a family of four with a simple grain diet. Obviously, once a greater variety of foodstuffs and other living costs such as rent and clothing are taken into account, that figure will rise much higher. If we take 1,000 sesterces as a reasonable guess, even allowing for the fact that this will have varied significantly from place to place and from year to year, then the prices given by Marcus can obviously be seen to be very high. They are certainly well above the means of the poor or maybe
even ‘average’ Roman. A slave would also have represented a substantial investment for an artisan. It shows how the large retinues of slaves maintained by the rich had little to do with economics and lots to do with conspicuous consumption.

Despite the huge number of slaves kept in Italy, many Roman texts seem to have had moral problems with the use of slaves. It is sometimes very difficult to square this conflict. How did the Romans use so many slaves but think it was morally wrong to do so? We need to recognise the rhetorical element of so many Roman sources, particularly from writers such as Seneca, who provides a number of important texts related to slavery. The decline of Rome from its purity of old was a literary motif. It was how the Romans assuaged their guilt at consuming so much, whether it was in the form of food in feasts or people as slaves.

Digest
21.1 gives details of the
Edict of the Curule Aediles
, which governed the sale of slaves and lists the details of defects that had to be revealed. On foundlings, see for example Pliny the Younger
Letters
10.65 and 66. Aulus Gellius
Attic Nights
20.1 describes how from the fourth century
BC
Rome did not allow its citizens to sell themselves as slaves to pay back debts. Earlier, it had been possible, but such slaves had to be sold across the Tiber, which was at that time outside Roman territory. On Germans as fanatical dice-players see Tacitus
Germania
24. The pirate raid on Mothone is to be found at Pausanias 4.35.6. The description of the capture of a small city is based on the Roman capture of Palermo in 259
BC
described in Diodorus Siculus 23.18. Prices are
based on the 5 million sesterces raised by Augustus’s 2 per cent sales tax on slaves and by the relative pricing of wheat and slaves in Diocletian’s
Edict on Maximum Prices
. I have given prices in sesterces at about the time of Augustus. For extreme prices see Pliny the Elder
Natural History
7.40; see the same source, 7.12, for Mark Antony’s twins; and 7.39 for the actors, Nero and Paezon. On pitying new slaves who find their altered status difficult see Seneca
On Anger
3.29. The proverbs can be found in Publius Syrus nos. 489 and 616. The story of Calvisius Sabinus training his slaves to memorise Homer is in Seneca
Letters
27. On childhood tutors see Quintilian
Institutes of Oratory
1.1. The account of Pliny the Younger writing to the emperor Trajan about criminals being used as public slaves is in his
Letters
10.31 and 32. ‘Lucky’ (Felix) was a common slave name.

   
CHAPTER II
   

S
O YOU HAVE BOUGHT
your slaves. How now do you manage them in such a way that they will work hard for you? Many a new slave owner has fallen into the trap of thinking that the whip alone is enough. Those of us whose families have possessed slaves for generations know that such treatment will soon wear a slave out. If you try to force your slaves beyond the limits of reasonable service, you will end up making them surly and unmanageable. Slaves like this are a vexation and a curse. Cruelty ends up hurting the master most. It might do for the mines but not on your farm estates, let alone in your household. Instead, you must realise that as a master you have an obligation to treat your slaves properly, and if you do that, then you can expect not only that they will do their jobs diligently but that they will remain fit to do so for many years to come.

It is incumbent on the higher orders in society to behave justly towards even the lowest kinds of people. There are none who are lower than the slaves. But we
should treat them in the same way that we do hired workmen. That is to say, we should insist that they work properly but that we should treat them fairly in return. This is despite the fact that slaves are, of course, no more than tools. A hired workman is a man. But a slave is a tool that is used to work the land or provide some other service. A slave just happens to be a tool that can speak. It is this faculty of speech that ranks him above the cattle and other farm animals. But you as a master and slave owner are at the top of society and it is right that you act in a moral and just manner at all times, even to those who do not deserve it.