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II. Interpreting the Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Extract

Attempts to find statements reflecting the attitudes and experiences of slaves have met with no more success than the search for those of women. The most likely possibilities are the fables and moral sententiae ascribed to known slaves or freedmen, such as Aesop and Phaedrus. But even here things are not as straightforward as they have seemed to some. Fables universalize the human experience; they may use the slave situation to illustrate that experience, but it does not follow that they are expressing any real slave’s point of view. In any case, the literary form of the fable makes it authoritarian – one can only accept or reject the moral of a fable, not argue rationally against it. In fact it encapsulates the advice which older adults give to children: if the genre was originally intended for children, then the reason why it was ascribed to the slave Aesop may well have been that the children of the Greek elite were brought up by slave nurses and paedagogi (childminders rather than ‘tutors’).

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 19: Slavery , 1987 , pp. 11 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

Notes

1. Christes, J., ‘Reflexe erlebter Unfreiheit in den Sentenzen des Publilius Syrus und den Fabeln des Phaedrus’, Hermes 107 (1979), 199–220.Google Scholar

2. Rose, G. P., ‘The Swineherd and the Beggar’, Phoenix 34 (1980), 285–97.Google Scholar

3. Ehrenberg, V., The People of Aristophanes (Oxford, 1951)Google Scholar; Spranger, P. P., Historische Untersuchungen zu den Sklavenfiguren des Plautus und Terenz (Wiesbaden, 1984 2)Google Scholar; Stace, C., ‘The Slaves of Plautus’, G & R 15 (1968), 64–77.Google Scholar

4. Veyne, P., ‘Vie de Trimalcion’, Annales E.S.C. 166 (1961), 213–47.Google Scholar

5. Apuleius, Apol. 17 ( = GARS 81).

6. Athenaeus, Deipn. 272 c (= GARS 80 p. 90).

7. L. Canfora in OPUS (ch. I n. 18 above), pp. 338.

8. Gschnitzer, F., Studien zur griechischen Terminologie der Sklaverei I (Wiesbaden, 1964 Google Scholar) and II (Wiesbaden, 1976); Mactoux, M.-M. Douleia. Esclavage et Pratiques Discursives dans l’Athènes Classique (Paris, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Aristotle, Pol. 1, 2.4 ( = GARS 2 p. 17). Cf. the use of the word instrumentum in Latin, or phrases like ‘natural wastage’ in English.

10. Griffin, M. T., ‘Seneca on Slavery’, Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (Oxford, 1976), pp. 256-85 & 458-61Google Scholar; Brunt, P. A., ‘Aspects of the Social Thought of Dio Chrysostom and of the Stoics’, PCPhS 199 (1973), 9–34.Google Scholar

11. Volkmann, H., ‘Die basileia als endoxos douleia’, Historia 16 (1967), 155–61.Google Scholar

12. Bartchy, S. S., First Century Slavery and the Interpretation of I Corinthians 7:21 (Missoula, Montana, 1973)Google Scholar; Laub, F., Die Begegnung des frühen Christentums mit der Sklaverei (Stuttgart, 1982)Google Scholar.

13. That the idea that slavery disappeared in the early Middle Ages was untenable was already seen by Bloch, M., ‘Comment et pourquoi finit l’esclavage antique?’, Annales E.S.C. 2 (1947), 30–44 and 161-70Google Scholar; reprinted in Finley, M. I. (ed.), Slavery in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 1968 2), 204-28Google Scholar. Cf.Verlinden, C., L’Esclavage dans l’Europe Médiévale (Gent, 1977)Google Scholar; Dockès, P., Medieval Slavery and Liberation (Engl. trans., Methuen, 1982)Google Scholar; Phillips, W. D. Jr., Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade (Minnesota/Manchester, 1985)Google Scholar.

14. The most accessible short survey I know of is Himmelmann, N., Archäologisches zum Problem der griechischen Sklaverei (Wiesbaden, 1971)Google Scholar.

15. Vercoutter, J. (ed.), The Image of the Black in Western Art I (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; Snowden, F. M., Blacks in Antiquity (Harvard U.P., 1970)Google Scholar and Before Color Prejudice (Harvard U.P., 1983).

16. ‘Opus reticulatum – technique de construction caractéristique de l’exploitation esclavagiste’: Esclaves et Maîtres en Etrurie Romaine (1981 French translation of the exhibition catalogue Schiavi e Padroni of 1979), p. 56.

17. Biezunska-Malowist, I., L’esclavage dans l’Egypte greco-romaine I (Warsaw, 1974)Google Scholar; II (1977), together with over thirty individual articles.

18. Andreau, J., Les Affaires de Monsieur Jucundus (Rome, 1974)Google Scholar.

19. Harper, J., ‘Slaves and Freedmen in Imperial Rome’, AJPh 93 (1972), 341 ff.Google Scholar; Clauss, M., ‘Probleme der Lebensalterstatistiken aufgrund römischer Grabinschriften’, Chiron 3 (1973), 395–427.Google Scholar

20. The standard English textbook remains Buckland, W. W., The Roman Lavi of Slavery (Cambridge, 1908)Google Scholar.

21. There is a useful English translation by H. Danby (Oxford, 1933). Cf.Goodman, M., State and Society in Roman Galilee A.D. 132-212 (Totowa, 1983)Google Scholar.

22. Härtel, G., ‘Einige Bemerkungen zur rechtlichen Stellung der Sklaven im 2/3 Jht. u.Z. anhand der Digesten’, Klio 59 (1977), 337-17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, a traditional Marxist discussion.

23. Langenfeld, H., Christianisierungspolitik und Sklavengesetzgebung der römischen Kaiser (Bonn, 1977)Google Scholar; Staerman, E. M., ‘Die ideologische Vorbereitung des Zusammenbruchs der Produktionsweise der Sklavereigesellschaft’, Klio 60 (1978), 225–33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, by a leading Soviet scholar, argues that Stoicism and Christianity, by ‘humanizing’ the practice of slavery, were trying to overcome the crisis of slaveholding society caused by the drying-up of sources of new captives.

24. Morabito, M., Les Realités de l’esclavage d’après le Digeste (Paris, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, fails to live up to its promising title.