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The regularity of manumission at Rome*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Thomas E. J. Wiedemann
Thomas E. J. Wiedemann
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
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Extract

The institution of slavery has served to perform different functions in different societies. The distinction between ‘closed’ and ‘open’ slavery can be a useful one: in some societies slavery is a mechanism for the permanent exclusion of certain individuals from political and economic privileges, while in others it has served precisely to facilitate the integration of outsiders into the community. ‘The African slave, brought by a foray to the tribe, enjoys, from the beginning, the privileges and name of a child, and looks upon his master and mistress in every respect as his new parents… by care and diligence, he may soon become a master himself, and even more rich and powerful than he who led him captive.’ The model of an ‘open’ slavery implies that service as a slave is not a state to which a person is permanently, let alone ‘naturally’, assigned, but more akin to an age-grade. A parallel might be domestic or agricultural service as it was practised in much of Europe until this century — a period spent serving in another household after childhood and prior to marriage.

A Roman slave, on formal manumission, joined the community of citizens. To what extent ought we therefore to succumb to the temptation to see slavery at Rome — in contrast to the Greek world — in terms of the ideal type of a ‘process of integration’? In a noted article on ‘Die Freilassung von Sklaven und die Struktur der Sklaverei in der römischen Kaiserzeit’ (Rivista Storica dell' Antichitià 2 [1972], 97-129), G. Alföldi argued that in the Roman Empire slavery was an ‘Übergangszustand’ (p. 122), a transitional state which ultimately gave most slaves a recognised if not a fully equal place as members of the Roman citizen community.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , May 1985 , pp. 162 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1985

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References

1 The distinction between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ types of slavery seems to have been formulated first by J. Goody: cf. ‘Slavery in time and space’ in Watson, J. L. (ed.), Asian and African Systems of Slavery (Oxford, 1980), 16–42Google Scholar. The temptation to see Roman slavery as ‘open’ in practice as well as in theory was not resisted in Wiedemann, T. E. J., Greek and Roman Slavery (London, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here abbreviated as GARS.

2 D., and Livingstone, C., Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi (London, 1865)Google Scholar, on the Ndebele. The picture is of course idealised; but the purpose of the idealisation is to make it clear to the potential audience of British radical-evangelicals that what was to be found in Central Africa was quite unlike what had to be condemned in New World slavery.

3 E.g. Kussmaul, A., Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Of course, in ‘open’ as in ‘closed’ slavery, slaves are perceived as much more marginal than servants, who are ‘insiders’: cf. Patterson, O., Slavery and Social Death (Harvard U.P, 1982)Google Scholar.

4 Weaver, P. R. C., Familia Caesaris (Cambridge, 1972), 97 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 30 or under: slaves:

1.73, 94, 95; 2.263, 380; 3.475, 485; 4.716; 8.1110; 9.1209; 12.1451, 1463, 1547, 1548; 14.1638, 1648; 22.2338; 31.2582; 36.2777; 38.2873; 42.3053.

Freed: 4.722; 9.1205 (cf. also 3.490).

Over 30: slaves:

1.94; 2.375; 12.1548; 14.1643; 38.2856 (cf. also 7.1030).

Freed: 1.48; 2.255; 6.984; 9.1205; 38.2843.

6 For a discussion of analogous cases of ideals serving to make the practice of slavery tolerable see Lovejoy, P. E. (ed.), The Ideology of Slavery in Africa (Beverly Hills/London, 1981)Google Scholar.

7 Pliny, NH 33.26 = GARS 83.

8 Typically, Horace, , Epod. 2.65Google Scholar; Martial, 2.90.9; 3.58.22.

9 Harris, W. V., ‘Towards a study of the Roman slave trade’, Mem. Am. Acad. Rome 36 (1980), 117–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘It felt comfortable to be surrounded at home by one's vernae’ (n. 17).

10 An example of such a libellus survives amongst the letters of Ennodius (bishop of Pavia, 514–21): ‘Gerontium itaque, cuius a me comperta fides, pudor, integritas, et exigit libertatem, et suis dotibus innotescit, per praesens petitorium a beatitudine vestra Romanae deprecor civitatis gaudere consortio…’ (Opusculum 8; PL 63.257 f.).

11 As argued by Garrido-Hory, M., Martial et l'esclavage (Paris, 1981), 119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Cf. CJ 7, title 13; for historical examples, Livy 26, 27 and Per. 77 = GARS 76 and 77.

13 Volkmann, H., art. ‘Sklaverei’, Kleiner Pauly 5.234Google Scholar. The reference should be to PL 24.587, not 565.

14 Jerome here refers to Leviticus 25 and 27; Volkmann's interpretation is perhaps based on Exodus 21.2: ‘Si emeris servum hebraeum, sex annis serviet tibi: in septimo egredietur liber gratis’. These injunctions are discussed by Mendelsohn, I., Slavery in the Ancient Near East (New York, 1949), 85 ffGoogle Scholar. That this remained the practice among Jews in the Graeco-Roman world is clear from Philo, , De Specialibus Legibus 2.79–85Google Scholar, and Josephus' comments on Herod's innovations, Antiquities, 16.1.1.

15 De finibus 2.23; cf. Nisbet, 's note on In Pis. 67, pp. 130 fGoogle Scholar.

16 H. Chantraine's review of the origins of this Roman peculiarity (‘ Zur Entstehung der Freilassung mit Bürgerrechtserwerb in Rom’, ANRW 1.2 [1972], 59–67)Google Scholar, seems to me not to give enough emphasis to archaic Rome as a city which shared reciprocal rights of potential citizenship with the other Latin communities.

17 Buckland, W. W., The Roman Law of Slavery (Cambridge, 1908), 628 ff. and 482 ffGoogle Scholar. The microfiche Concordance to the Digest Jurists compiled by Honoré, A. and Menner, J. (Oxford, 1980)Google Scholar is an extremely helpful tool for the study of the Digest.

18 D 18.7 ‘De servis exportandis, vel si ita mancipium venierit, ut manumittatur vel contra’: 3 (Paulus), 8 (Papinian); D 37.14 ‘De iure patronatus’, 8 (Modestinus); D 29.2.71 (Ulpian) 1 ‘intra certum diem’; D 40.8 ‘Qui sine manumissione ad libertatem pervenient’ 1 (Paulus).

19 D 24.1 ‘De donationibus inter virum et uxorem’, 7 (Ulpian), 8: ‘ut intra annum manumitteret’, 9: ‘ut intra annum manumittat’; D 40.1 ‘De manumissionibus’, 20 (Papinian) 2: ‘Puellam ea lege vendidit, ut post annum ab emptore manumitteretur’; 23 (Paulus): ‘Caius Seius Pamphilam hac lege emit, ut intra annum manumitteretur’.

20 There is a full discussion of the ruling in Buckland, 291 ff., esp. 297.

21 It should be remembered that in actual fact sales contracts might stipulate very much longer periods: Augustus imposed terms of thirty or twenty years on rebellious war-captives (Sueton. Aug. 21 = GARS 119; Dio, 53.25.4).

22 D 18.7.10 (Scaevola), ‘post mortemque eius in libertate morarentur’; D 40.8.4 (Ulpian), ‘ut a vivo emptore manumittatur’.

23 D 40.8.8 (Papinian), ‘mancipia mater filiae donaverat, ut filia curaret ea post mortem suam esse libera’ — where liberty is acquired even if the daughter dies before the mother.

24 I omit references to the period of two to six months within which the heirs were required to complete the process of manumitting a slave (D 40.7.40.7 and 8).

25 The period of ‘ten years' freedom’ granted a slave at D 40.4.33 f. is an example of a meaningless and therefore void clause.

26 For the genuineness of these wills, cf. Gottschalk, H. B., ‘Notes on the wills of the Peripatetic scholarchs’, Hermes 100 (1972), 312 ffGoogle Scholar.

27 E.g. (ps.-)Aristotle, Oikonomikos 1.5.6 = GARS 206. Similar promises of freedom in many other slave-holding societies are discussed by Patterson, O., Slavery and Social Death (Harvard U.P., 1982), chs. 8–10Google Scholar.