T&J themselves owned enslaved human beings, and they were far from alone. Enslavement in the Roman Empire was the practice of both prostitutes and priests, even rabbis. Justinian hires some VIP jurists to Marie Kondo centuries of Roman law.
T&J themselves owned enslaved human beings, and they were far from alone. Enslavement in the Roman Empire was the practice of both prostitutes and priests, even rabbis. Justinian hires some VIP jurists to Marie Kondo centuries of Roman law.
T&J Episode 6
Enslavement
Content Warning:
Welcome. Some preemptive sourcing here. This episode draws heavily from Keith Bradley and his book Slavery and Society at Rome as well as Kyle Harper and his book, Slavery in the Late Roman World.
I also have a series announcement to make, which is that I’m going to be taking a bit of a pause as we say here in Germany on the series after this episode. T&J is a one-woman production, and that woman is me. And in this economy, the reality is that I juggle the research, writing, production, song and music composition, social media, everything for the podcast all alongside a full-time job. There is still more T&J to come, do not panic! I just need to recharge my batteries a bit. So keep your subscriptions going! Follow and donate on Patreon. That’s patreon.com/tandjpodcast. But also, if that’s just not something you can do financially right now … I feel you. It means a lot that you’re here and telling people about it.
One other thing: You can listen to episodes multiple times. I do. Some of the feedback I’ve gotten is that the episodes feel really dense, and that’s ok. It’s not a test. I think of the episodes more like songs; the series like an album. Something you listen to as a whole; or a single song on repeat, depending on your mood. Different things are going to appear and stick and resonate with each listen, by design. So a strange thing for a podcast, I know, but encouraged.
Last, but not least, a quick content warning: This episode is about enslavement and covers a lot of really important and often distressing material. I recommend adults screen it for younger listeners first. Please take care of yourselves.
Intro:
In his book Slavery and Society at Rome, scholar Keith Bradley writes: 'The historian of Roman slavery is at a special disadvantage, for although a great volume of information is on-hand, it is all subject to the fundamental flaw that there is no surviving record, if indeed any ever existed, of what life in slavery was like from a slave’s point of view …'
Let me repeat that. There is no surviving record of what Roman slavery was like from a slave’s perspective.
What we do have to try and fill in this ginormous blank spanning practically two millennia are essentially … pro-slavery sources. As well as things like bookkeeping, bills of sale, census records — and in an interesting twist, Justinian himself.
Because in 528 AD, the year after he was made emperor, Justinian hired some very talented jurists — the leader of whom was named Tribonian — and had them Marie Kondo the shit out of Roman law.
Does this Roman law spark joy? Does that Roman law spark joy?
Because by the time we hit the T&J era, Roman law was a bit of an out-of-control, hoarder mess. Different regions sometimes had different laws; expert legal commentary could be contradictory; often some of the laws were simply outdated and no longer relevant.
At Justinian’s behest, Tribonian and his team sorted through all of the imperial constitutions that they’d inherited across centuries of Roman rule, imposed a structure and hierarchy, kept or adapted what they thought was relevant for the 6th century … and tossed the rest out.
Published in 534 AD, the multi-volume, multi-objective Code of Civil Law had taken eight years to finalize, and was very much a part of Justinian’s vision of Roman imperial restoration.
And it’s … a pretty big deal. Justinian’s Code of Civil Law not only constitutes the final, definitive form of Roman law, incredibly, it also forms the very basis of European law still in force today.
534 is also the year that sits squarely between Justinian’s victory against the Vandals and launching his war against the Goths.
What can I say? Justinian was a busy man.
Now, the Code of Civil Law, as a whole, consisted of four works. And slavery was mentioned, to say the least.
According to Byzantine historian Peter Sarris:
‘The prominence given to issues pertaining to slavery in legal works of an instructional, jurisprudential, and responsive character … is a good indication of the centrality of the institution.’
Transitional Beat
Ulpian: The question arises whether one whose tongue has been cut out is healthy. This problem is dealt with by Ofilius in respect of a horse. His opinion is in the negative.
This legal opinion comes to us from Justinian’s Code of Civil Law by a highly-regarded Roman jurist named Ulpian, who rose to prominence back in the early 200s AD. The legal question being asked here was: What constituted a defect? What was the seller legally bound to disclose before a sale? And Ulpian’s answer reveals … a lot. For one, enslaved people having their tongues brutally cut out was not at all uncommon.
Something we’ve encountered already in the T&J podcast.
There’s a lot of tongue-cutting in Rome. Because, well, any amount of tongue cutting is too much tongue cutting, in my opinion. But what Ulpian ultimately says is … that anything a buyer would need to know about a horse’s health prior to its sale could also be applied to any human merchandise prior to their sale.
Only … how many horses were getting their tongues cut out? Likely none. Because horses don’t speak.
Or more importantly, speak out.
Which brings me to another layer of this history. And that’s where we can find testimonies from enslaved people.
The Americas.
It cannot be overstated; the profound role that Black Americans — like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs — have in our understanding of the slave experience more broadly. Because they recorded what had happened to them.
Those enslaved in the Roman Empire and those enslaved in the antebellum South — both had the unique, if deeply unenviable experience — of being enslaved in two of the only five slave societies the world has ever known.
But what is a slave society? What are the factors that resulted in Rome becoming one and for how long? What were the realities of enslavement specifically during the T&J era? And how, if at all, does that lead to the feudalism of the Middle Ages?
I’m Christine Laskowski and this is T&J, a limited podcast series devoted to sixth century Byzantium and the greatest recorded love story on earth – that between Empress Theodora and her husband, the Emperor Justinian. This is Episode 6: ‘Enslavement.’
Part I. Becoming A Slave Society
Enslavement, or the practice of owning other human beings, is about as old as human civilization itself. And has long been connected to settled and organized, agrarian societies. The very first of which — Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China, or what are sometimes referred to as the great River Valley civilizations — all present the earliest, substantial evidence for slavery in their written records. Dating back to 3,000 B.C.
There was always slavery in the Roman empire, as well as Persia, and Rome’s neighboring barbarian zones.
Here’s a description of enslavement practices among the Germanic tribes in Northern Europe around 100 AD, brought to us by the Roman historian, Tacitus:
Tacitus: Slaves in general do not have particular duties about the house and estate allotted to them, as our slaves do. Each has control of a holding and a home of his own. The master demands from him a stated quantity of grain, livestock, or cloth, as he would from a tenant … To flog a slave, or to punish him by imprisonment and hard labor, is very unusual; yet to kill one outright is quite common.
However, unlike the practice of enslavement among the Germanic tribes, a slave society, like Rome was when Tacitus made these observations — was enslavement practiced on a much larger scale.
By definition, a slave society is one in which enslaved human beings play an important part in production and form a high proportion — that is, over 20 percent — of the population. That’s one-in-five people or more.
And slave societies typically practice what’s called chattel slavery, which basically means when enslaved people are treated like livestock …
With this criteria, only five genuine slave societies have ever existed in all of human history. In the modern era, they are Brazil, the Caribbean and the United States. And Athens and Roman Italy in classical antiquity.
Transitional Beat
There appears to be consensus among historians that Rome became a slave society around — and certainly no later — than the 3rd century BC. And ceased to be a slave society around the 4th century AD. So, for roughly 700 years. That’s a long time. And for that initial shift into a slave society to occur, several things came together.
A robust market economy, bolstered by the world’s very first — and psychotropic — cash crop: Wine. I’m not claiming wine wasn’t popular before, of course, but shuttled around the Mediterranean in clay amphora year-round, wine was suddenly cheaper, more varied, and more readily available than ever before …
And as I discussed in Episode 1: Bread and Circuses, the Roman government was also on the hook for supplying its citizens with free bread, and a lot of grain was required for said bread …
It wasn’t just food and drink that required labor and shipping, but textiles, too. Imported silk for the elite, but namely, linen and wool. Cloth made of linen, which, for those like me who didn’t know, is derived from the stems of the flax plant. Now, it can be so easy in this age of fast fashion to forget that the industrial revolution of the late 18th century was born largely of advances in technology around textile manufacturing. Made possible by the vast amounts of cotton produced by the labor of enslaved Black people who numbered in the millions.
Because for all of human history clothing was really fucking expensive. Textiles were super labor-intensive and crazy time-consuming to make. For instance, if you, a person in the early T&J era wanted to buy a plain, mass-produced tunic … that would’ve cost you approximately 1 solidus and required as much as 100 to 150 hours of spinning and weaving to make. And that doesn’t include the labor of processing the fiber, sewing, shipping, etc. So the incentives to cut labor costs in clothing manufacture were huge. Still are.
But now we have all of these in-demand goods — wine, olive oil, grain, textiles to name a few — that require a fuckton of human labor. But what’s also necessary are the mechanisms for these goods to reach vendors and buyers quickly. In short, an efficient marketplace.
Raw materials and merchandise could be moved quickly and efficiently either via a network of roads or ships. And it was mainly ships. Rome also had a single monetary currency and a legal system ensuring that trade could happen within the Empire about as swiftly and easily as had ever been possible across such distances before.
And this … this was the initial set-up for Rome’s transformation into a slave society. Because right around the 2nd century BC onward, Rome was bringing in vast numbers — we’re talking in the hundreds of thousands — of prisoners-of-war to Italy in the wake of successful foreign campaigns in places like Gaul and Britain.
Part II. Becoming a Slave
Back when the city of Rome was where Romans were their Romannest, the major slave markets were located at the Temple of Castor in the Roman Forum. The upscale shops of the Saepta Julia were apparently where people went if they were interested in something more ‘exotic’ — that’s historian Keith Bradley’s word, not mine, and in his book doesn’t elaborate.
As I mentioned earlier, certain details about slaves had to be disclosed, by law, prior to any sale. Not only diseases or defects, like a limp or a cut-out tongue, but also whether they had ever tried to run away before. Did they loiter while running errands? Was there a chance they could still be delivered to a third party as compensation for wrongdoing? Had they committed a capital offense? Attempted suicide? Had they fought wild animals in a gladiatorial arena? What was their nationality or race?
While there wasn’t a direct association with enslaved people and skin color in antiquity. A slave’s race or natio was nonetheless still very important to buyers. Here’s another remark from that jurist Ulpian, from Justinian’s Code of Civil Law.
Ulpian: For there is a presumption that some slaves are good, coming from a race with no bad repute, while others are thought bad, since they come from a notorious people. If, then, a slave’s nationality be not declared, an action will be given to the purchaser and to all interested parties whereby the purchaser may return the slave.
In the marketplace, an enslaved person would likely be made to stand on a raised platform with all of this information — their race, perceived defects — written on a tablet that was hung around their neck. A literal ‘For Sale’ sign with contingencies. And those looking to buy were permitted to make all manner of requests for the purposes of inspection. They could have the person stripped naked; poked, groped, and prodded.
And because Romans apparently preferred new slaves — believing they were easier to train — traders would also advertise a new slave’s status in the markets … by covering their feet in chalk.
Now, not all war captives were taken immediately to Roman marketplaces. Occasionally, military leadership would allow prisoners-of-war to be ransomed. Which meant that if you possessed a substantial amount of money, you stood a decent chance of buying your way out.
Sometimes war captives – that is, those without the means – were never transported to a market, and were instead sold on-site either to local slave dealers or awarded to troops as payment.
But the more on this I read — and I’ve read a lot — the more enslavement begins to take on the form of this invisible net that could catch you at any moment. And the closer you were to the margins of society — and the border, the more likely you were to get caught in it. Although whether — and to what extent — that fear lived inside people day-to-day … that’s honestly hard to say; and that reality, hard to fathom.
Transitional Beat
Legally speaking, to be captured and enslaved was to enter a state of living death.
According to Justinian’s Code of Civil Law.
Justinian: In every branch of the law, a person who fails to return from enemy hands is regarded as having died at the moment when he was captured.
One place where we’ve experienced this already is the Roman triumph. If you’ll remember the one I described at the end of Barbarian Makeover: Part 2, that was designed to celebrate victory over a foreign enemy, i.e. the Vandals, which is why the parade included the public display of both spoils and enslaved rivals. But, any Roman citizens who’d been enslaved by that foreign enemy were an important part of the Triumph procession as well. Because these freed Roman citizens weren’t seen as just having been returned home, they were seen as having been returned from the dead.
When you were captured, by the enemy, by a slave trader, or by pirates — yes, they had those back then, too — you lost everything. Including your identity.
Here’s a Roman bill of sale from the coastal Turkish city of Side written on papyrus around 142 AD:
Voice of Roman Bill of Sale No. 1: Pamphilos, otherwise known as Kanapos, son of Aigyptos, from Alexandria, has purchased in the marketplace from Artemidoros, son of Aristokles, the slave girl Abaskantis, or by whatever other name she may be known, a ten-year-old Galatian, for the sum of 280 silver denarii. M. Aelius Gavianus stands surety for and guarantees the sale. The girl is healthy … is free of liability in all respects, is prone neither to wandering nor running away, and is free of epilepsy …
The attention given to the provenance of Roman citizens is staggering compared to the ‘or whatever name she goes by’ flippantly afforded to the person being sold. In this case, a ten-year-old girl.
Here’s another receipt, also from the first century, recorded on a wax tablet, which was later discovered in a Transylvanian mine:
Voice of Roman Bill of Sale No. 2: Maximus, son of Bato, bought and acquired, for the price of 205 denarii, a girl, a foundling, who goes by the name Passia (or whatever other name she goes by) through a sale with Dasius son of Verzo, a Pirustian from Kavieretium. She is around six-years-old. It is agreed the girl is in good health, free of crime or injury to another person, and is not known to be a runaway.
Transitional Beat
The primary ways people became slaves in the Roman Empire were either through capture or when they were infants.
Due to the Roman doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem, literally, ‘that which is born follows the womb,’ children of an enslaved mother inherited her legal status at birth. Yet another way to be enslaved was something known as infant exposure. Now, infant exposure — and I admit, I had to look this up — is the act of placing your baby somewhere so that they can be discovered and taken in by someone else. While the numbers in antiquity are impossible to calculate, there appears to be consensus that infant exposure was widespread in the Roman world.
Only … those who took the baby in were legally allowed to raise it however they chose. As in, no joke, there were plenty of people who found an abandoned baby on their doorstep and were like, ‘Oooh, honey, look. A new slave.’ And that was considered to be completely normal.
These discovered children were known as ‘foundlings.’
Part III. Interrogating the Mindset
Slavery was endemic. Even the poorest households tended to own at least one. To be without any slaves at all was to be so broke as to appear essentially homeless.
Enslavement was the practice of both prostitutes and priests. Even rabbis … There was simply no moral quandary around it the way we today might think.
For example, when clergyman, John Chrysostom of Antioch, would excoriate his congregation about slavery… it wasn’t because his congregants owned other human beings; John Chrysostom himself owned other human beings. No, the issue John Chrysostom’s fiery 4th century sermons sought to address was his congregants dragging an excessive number of slaves — we’re talking upwards of dozens as an entourage — to the bathhouses and to the theater, but never to church.
Enslaved people weren’t just an integral part of the labor force and production, they were also key to a Roman citizen’s public persona. There was even a specific word for an enslaved person whose job it was to trail their owner everywhere they went. This person was known as a pedisequus, or a ‘foot follower.’
Now, T&J were themselves slave owners whose total likely numbered in the hundreds, if not more, once they ascended the throne. And they no doubt had their own foot followers and servants, primarily in the form of eunuchs.
The truth is, very few details on Theodora and Justinian’s slave ownership survives. And they’re not an exception. According to historian Kyle Harper, compared to even the late fourth century AD, the slave system of the late sixth century, ‘remains obscure in comparison.’
Slavery was by then primarily domestic. That we know. And the Roman Empire nucleated around Constantinople, by that point, also no longer met the criteria of a slave society. That we also know. But that’s about it.
However, what is remarkably consistent throughout is the mindset around enslavement.
It’s like it truly hadn’t occurred to anyone — perhaps other than the Alans — in this section of the globe, at least — that humanity could possibly function any other way.
When 4th century Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus included this detail about the Alans not having slaves, it wasn’t seen as radical or revolutionary. Quite the opposite. It was part of a laundry list of evidence for their simple-mindedness.
Ammianus Marcellinus: No temple or sacred place is to be seen in their country, not even a hut thatched with straw can be discerned anywhere, but after the manner of barbarians a naked sword is fixed in the ground and they reverently worship it as their god of war, the presiding deity of those lands over which they range. The Alans have a remarkable way of divining the future; for they gather very straight twigs of osier and sort them out at an appointed time with certain secret incantations, and thus clearly learn what impends. They do not know the meaning of slavery ...
Two centuries after Ammanius Marcellinus noted this quirk of the Alans in his chronicle of the Roman empire, our very own Procopius of Caesarea took on the job. In the elements of the Secret History we’ve covered so far. Enslaved people are mentioned, albeit mostly in association with Theodora’s theater days.
Procopius: … and Theodora, the next in order, clothed in a little sleeved frock suitable to a slave girl, would follow her about, performing various services …
Procopius: … she did engage in intercourse of a masculine type of lewdness with the wretches, slaves though they were, who, following their masters to the theater, incidentally took advantage …
Procopius: … and some slaves, whose duty this was, sprinkled grains of barley over her private parts …
While what Procopius tells us could all very well be true, it is a rhetorical device that effectively connects the now-Empress’s body and genitalia with Roman society’s dreggy, non-entities. In the Secret History, sexual impropriety and enslavement are almost always paired together.
Procopius: ... and Justin had a wife named Lupicina who, being a slave and a barbarian, had been a concubine of the man who previously bought her ...
Procopius: ... yet a certain slave girl named Macedonia, approaching Belisarius … told him the whole story, adducing as two witnesses two lads who were charged with the service of the bedchamber.
But aside from what you just heard, and some grumblings about social upheaval he saw as contributing directly to the Nika Riots, which I’ll cover next episode, that’s about all Procopius has to say in the Secret History about enslavement or enslaved people.
Even when it applies to the capture of Roman citizens by their rival empire, the Persians. Procopius’ tone … it can come across to the modern reader as, well, shrug emoji. Enslaved people, and what we would think of today as their plight, don’t occupy any territory in the Secret History. They were an element of Roman society that warranted, at most, pity. And rarely justice.
Slaves simply were.
And with that mindset, Procopius was very much a man — albeit an elite man — of his time.
I’m going to explore both the labor and the treatment of those enslaved in Rome in the second half of the episode. But first, let’s take a short break.
What you’ll be hearing is a 1915 recording from the Tuskegee Institute Singers performing the spiritual ‘Nobody Knows The Trouble I See.’
Instrumental Break:
Nobody Knows The Trouble I See – Tuskegee Institute Singers (1915)
Part IV. Slave Labor
From a very early age, Roman slaveowners learned to command authority. Children of the patrician elite were being prepared to be slave owners.
Roman child No. 1: Get up, boy, see if it’s light yet: open the door and window.
Roman child No. 2: Give me that; hold out my shoes, unfold my best clothes and put my play clothes away. Hand me my cloak and mantle.
Roman child No. 1: Take some clean water to your master, my brother, so that he may go with me to school.
What you just heard was taken directly from Latin language exercises in a children’s textbook. Slave owners whose estates consisted of massive plantations in the countryside as well as huge mansions in the city.
And these vast holdings meant that the number of enslaved people these children would later own, could number in the hundreds — even the thousands — among certain families. Often, it’s possible to deduce this number from manumission records. Because the number of slaves one could legally free in their will was set at a percentage of the total … a legal convention that dates all the way back to 2 BC, and was intentionally designed to control the number of people that could be freed in one go.
What was provided in Justinian’s Code of Civil Law were six categories of holdings.
Those in the between 3 to 10 category could free half of their slaves in their will; those between 11 and 30 could free one third; those between 30 and 100 could free up to one quarter. And everyone who owned 100 or more slaves was legally barred from freeing more than a fifth. For instance, the noted author and politician, Pliny the Younger, who died in the second century AD, provided in his will for the manumission and maintenance of 100 slaves. So we know he owned at least 500.
And the more slaves there were, the more specialized their roles.
Among the rural jobs listed in Justinian’s Code of Civil Law were things like: ditch digger, water-carrier, potter, doorkeeper, trainee waiter, sweeper, furniture supervisor, barber, and blacksmith. To name a few, but nowhere close to all.
Within an urban household, for example that of Emperor Augustus’ wife, Livia, enslaved people filled dozens of roles. Things like: treasurer, silversmith, goldsmith, servant in charge of the silver, shoemaker, clothes folder, furniture polisher, chamberlain, supervisor of the chamberlains, pet child, wool-weigher, reader, clerk, secretary, pearl setter, doctor, supervisor of the doctors, wet nurse, caterer, midwife, financial administrator, servant in charge of purple garments, issuer of invitations, servant in charge of shrine, masseuse, servant in charge of perfumed oils, and sickbay orderly.
Again, this is to name many of the roles assigned to enslaved people, but it is by no means exhaustive.
According to scholar Keith Bradley, "No occupation in Roman society was closed to slaves. The only exception, as it happens, was military service, from which slaves were legally, and uniquely, barred."
The rationale behind this level of specialization, particularly among the households of the elite, had a lot to do with prestige and self-sufficiency.
But it also meant that there was only one person to punish if the work of keeping those perfumed oils tip-top was deemed sub-par. The degrees of specialization can get … pretty grotesque as well. There is a record of one elite household in Gaza who made it the task of an enslaved person to run, like a hamster, inside a hydraulic wheel located in the owner’s garden. People with dwarfism, jesters, jugglers — they were also among a category of enslaved entertainers.’
Enslaved entertainers also included women who specialized in playing music inside the houses of the rich. But these women would be expected to know both ‘the loom and the lyre.’ Meaning, any down time would be used for other tasks, specifically labor-intensive textile-making but also … sexual and reproductive labor.
In short, enslaved labor encompassed a broad, broad spectrum of roles, which could change drastically depending on just three factors: the labor sector to which you were assigned – domestic or field; the gender you were – male, female, and – we’ll get to it – even eunuch; and the wealth of those who owned you – elite or modest or poor.
And even then … there is no singular, archetypal Roman enslavement experience. Other than to say that, you would have, every single day of your enslaved life, been exploited. Slaves were expected to work throughout their lives; the concept of retirement did not exist.
Now, you may have also noticed that slaves could be things like doctors, accountants, business managers, tutors, and scribes. Roles that were more the exception than the rule, but nonetheless required advanced training, education … literacy.
And while that no doubt had its advantages, notwithstanding proximity to the person who owned you, which could increase your chances of being set free. There were no guarantees. And you were still not free. And even under some of the best of circumstances, still treated like shit. By little shits.
Here is a remarkable anecdote from a man named Libanius describing a popular prank. One that students in Antioch would pull on their enslaved pedagogues, or tutors. The prank was known colloquially as ‘carpeting.’
Libanius: Nowadays, [the students] grasp the carpet along its sides, stretched out on the ground, sometimes many of them, sometimes fewer, according to the measure of the carpet. Then, putting the [tutor] who is to suffer humiliation on the middle of it, they throw him as high as possible — and it is very high — amidst their laughter.
Part V. Slave Treatment (Provisions/Abuse)
Back when the city of Rome was where Romans were their Romannest, for the enslaved laboring in the countryside — working in, say, cereal production or viticulture — their pulmentarium would change according to the season: sometimes their pulmentarium would consist of olives and herbs; herring and vinegar; other times it was a simple mixture of dried apples and pears.
Pulmentarium was the Latin name for a relish … ground with a mortar and pestle to add flavor, and also a bit of nutrition, to the enslaved workforce’s otherwise abysmal diet. In more elite households, there was often an enslaved person whose sole role was literally that of pulmentarium maker.
And pulmentarium would be eaten with the coarsest, lowest grade bread, or mixed in a gruel.
Which is why, whenever possible, the enslaved also kept private gardens; gathered and foraged wild mushrooms and greens; returned home with leftovers from their owners’ meals, or simply stole whatever they could eat without arousing suspicion. And I don’t even want to use the word stealing in this context because they were intentionally kept in a near-constant state of hunger.
Monthly allotments of food rations were intentionally meager and intentionally cheap; meant to be functional and little more.
Because enslavement was a life of deprivation.
Many rural slaves lived in simple huts, or cottages, that were thrown up in a makeshift fashion from whatever bits of lumber or materials they could find. This could be reeds; it could also be animal droppings. They made their roofs from thatch or sometimes even leaves. Many didn’t have straw or blankets, and so they slept right on the dirt.
Clothing, too, was weaponized.
Because, as we already discussed, clothing was incredibly time-consuming and labor intensive to make. Therefore, even the simplest garments, like a basic tunic, as I touched on at the beginning of the episode, were really fucking expensive.
And like today, what people wore said a lot about who they were in society. Although, I should note that by the T&J era, the toga is well in the past. Togas had been swapped out for long tunics, which fastened at the shoulders, ended at the ankles and were worn by both men and women.
Yet, while clothing was absolutely associated with rank — even in the T&J era. There still weren’t any clothes that were uniquely associated with slaves. However, their un-free status could often be easily ascertained due to the clothing’s quality.
What enslaved people wore was entirely determined by the jobs they did and the attitudes — or caprices — of the people who owned them. Who were frequently, as you might have guessed, stingy as fuck.
Sometimes enslaved people weren’t given any clothing at all. Two accounts from Sicily show how some resorted to wearing wolf and wild boar hides to cover up their bodies. Others were told that if they wanted clothes, well, they had better steal them from passersby.
Occasionally, the withholding of clothing had prurient motivations.
One senator, Cestius Gallus’ preference was to be waited upon by enslaved women who were completely nude.
Sure, there are examples of ‘liveried waiters’ and ‘pretty, curly-headed pages in handsome clothes.’ Enslaved domestics sometimes even wore fancy jewelry, which of course, they did not, and could not, own.
But most likely, if you were an enslaved person owned by a Roman citizen, you maybe got a tunic — singular — every year. Made from drab, brownish or dingy-colored wool. And maybe a blanket or cloak. If you were lucky, you might have had wooden shoes on your feet, but chances are … you worked, and walked, barefoot.
In the words of historian Keith Bradley, ‘The evidence describes a fairly bleak material regime for most Roman slaves.’ Such that clothing for sex ‘was not an improbable exchange.’
Transitional Beat
Enslavement was a life of exploitation, humiliation, deprivation, violence, and abuse. Verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. There was nothing unusual or untoward about abusing an enslaved person, that is, unless the abuse was perceived by the owner’s peers as having been carried out in an uncalculated or undisciplined way.
Galen, the renowned Greek physician, who lived in the 1-to-200s AD, casually noted how common it was for slaves to be punched, kicked, to be blinded. Galen himself had once seen a man stab a slave in the eye with a reed pen in a fit of anger. Even Galen’s own mother had the habit of biting her enslaved maids whenever she lost her temper.
And as I noted previously, an owner’s sexual access to their enslaved workforce was regarded as typical. So much so that for Emperor Marcus Aurelius to resisttaking sexual advantage of two slaves — Benedicta and Theodotus — well, that was a source of significant spiritual satisfaction for him.
Like, Marcus Aurelius just had to jot that down.
Transitional Beat
All enslaved women were, in effect, sex slaves. Whether for sexual favors, for the enslaved children and capital they could produce, even the breast milk they could make for their owner’s children, as wet nurses. Enslaved women were exploited for sex, or had that potential projected onto them, from childhood.
Beliefs about the female body even went so far as to prevent some enslaved women from having the sex that they themselves may have wanted. Abstinence was often imposed on wet nurses because sexual activity was thought to ruin the breast milk.
Ultimately, enslaved women were seen as so valuable that, prior to menopause, their rate of manumission or being set free, compared to that of enslaved men, was basically zero.
Part VII. Routes to Freedom (Escape, Emancipation, And An Absence Of Abolition)
One of the components of Justinian’s Code of Civil Law is what’s known as The Digest.
And The Digest is a whopping 50 books of synthesized, organized legal commentary. The Digest’s entire 40th book deals only with laws and legal opinions pertaining to manumission.
What is astonishing, if not entirely unsurprising, are the lengths slave owners would go to to retain their ownership.
Justinian (from the Digest): If freedom has been left to the slave in the following terms, ‘Let Stichus, my slave, be free in the twelfth year after my death,’ it is … in the twelfth year when the smallest part of the twelfth year has come or passed, and … for every day of that year.
Here’s another one example, regarding spelling errors:
Justinian (from the Digest): A man who had a slave Cratistus provided in his will: ‘Let my slave Cratinus be free.’ Could the slave Cratistus attain freedom, when the testator had not a slave Cratinus but only one called Cratistus? He replied that the mistake of a syllable was no bar.
There’s even an account of someone denying an enslaved woman her freedom because the terms were that she had to give birth to three children first, but the person who had inherited her, forced her to take contraceptives …
These sketchy AF scenarios were commonplace enough that they needed their own book in a 6th century jurisprudential text.
Historian Kyle Harper put it this way, ‘Slavery produced a bewildering variety of court cases, but even more striking is the fact that the vast majority of disputes revolved around only a handful of recurring scenarios.’
Transitional Beat — 00:00
An enslaved person could escape, and they did. But they were not legally free, nor were they entitled to the benefits afforded Roman citizens. We also know, there was a very good chance — if you couldn’t manage to alter or obfuscate it — that your clothing would give you away, in addition to any number of other markers, like disfigurement through abuse, or how you spoke. And the consequences of being caught were harsh. Being branded, mutilated, disabled, and/or being-forced-to-wear-chains-and-an-iron-collar-for-the-rest-of-your-life harsh.
Within the empire, there were very effective and widespread systems in place for catching runaways. Things like posting notices in public squares, or outside temples and churches, for example.
Several of these documents have been found in the papyri garbage pile located in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus. One refers to a boy named Philippus, who was about 14-years-old when he ran away. Philippus is described as having pale skin, speaking badly — whatever that means — and wearing ‘a thick woolen tunic and a used shoulder belt’ when he absconded; the owner promised his finder a reward.
Another notice describes an Egyptian runaway, unnamed, who was 32-years-old at the time of his escape, could speak no Greek, and was a weaver by trade. The description of his physical appearance as well as his manner is … intriguing to say the least.
Owner of Runaway: Tall, lean, smooth-shorn, with a slight scar on the left side of his head, honey-complexioned, somewhat pale, with a scanty beard … Smooth-skinned, narrow in the jaws, long-nosed … And he walks around as if he were somebody important, chattering in a shrill voice.
During the Roman Empire, even through the T&J era, there is no record of any Abolitionist thought, let alone an Abolitionist movement; no Underground Railroad, or Free States, or Canada. And with that last one, not really until 1834. If you, an enslaved person, were to, say, flee outside the empire, there was a good chance you would be nabbed and enslaved there, too. There weren’t any citizens advocating for your freedom or rights as people, and not property. And there weren’t any cordoned off spaces that you could run to and be recognized as such.
Which doesn’t mean that enslaved people didn’t try to escape … or revolt .
Transitional Beat
The most infamous Roman slave revolt was led by a man you may have heard of. And his name was Spartacus.
Spartacus, NAT: Spartacus, Spartacus, Spartacus. I love you, Spartacus.
Popularized for mainstream audiences in the 1960 Stanley Kubrick film of the same name, and later revived for elder millennial audiences like me via its brief cameo in the 1996 Amy Heckerling film, Clueless …
Clueless, NAT: Christian had a thing for Tony Curtis, so he brought over some Like it Hot and Sporaticus.
Spartacus, whichever way you know of him, led a revolt way back in 73 BC.
Spartacus galvanized 70-something of his fellow slaves into escaping from their gladiatorial training school just north of what is today the city of Naples. His insurrection lasted, incredibly, for nearly two years. Spartacus and his army roamed the Italian peninsula, posing a real threat. And tens of thousands of slaves even escaped to join up with him. That is, until their rebellion was quashed. But Spartacus was the exception, not the rule. Slave revolts in the Roman Empire after Spartacus, were … rare. Likely due to newer, more severe measures that ensured the success of Spartacus’ insurrection would not be repeated.
And it wasn’t.
According to historian Keith Bradley, ‘An insurrection on the scale of that led by Spartacus did not occur again in the history of slavery until the turn of the 19th century when the modern state of Haiti emerged from the slave movement headed in St. Domingue by Toussaint L’Ouverture.’
Which is not to insist or imply that those enslaved within the Roman Empire were passive. Not at all.
From violent acts, such as suicide or murderous assaults on slaveowners, to any form of petty sabotage you can think of, there are plenty of accounts of enslaved resistance.
Yet as far as we can tell, aside from maybe Spartacus’ slave revolt, there never developed among the Roman Empire’s slave population a sense of common identity — or what we’d think of today as class consciousness.
Enslaved men who were legally manumitted and therefore became Roman citizens, very often went on to engage in the practice of slave-owning themselves.
Something freed Black Americans in the Antebellum South, I should add, categorically did not do. Unless there was prudence and safety, in legally owning a relative or, say, a spouse, free Blacks living in slave states effectively practiced their repudiation of the institution of slavery by not engaging with it. Even when the law permitted them to do so. There are a few records of free Blacks owning slave-holding plantations, but that number is minuscule compared to that of whites.
Conclusion
When it comes to enslavement practices between 450 and 570 AD in the Roman Empire, as I said before, we don’t have a whole lot to go on. Only that by the T&J era, the majority of enslaved labor was no longer in the fields, but within households as domestics. The main exceptions to this were mining and the creation of purple dye, because apparently that shit was the real drudgery.
Byzantine slaves still did a lot of errand-running and message-carrying. There was no postal service for private citizens back then, so the work of correspondence — which could require hundreds of miles of travel — was typically delegated to enslaved people.
But for now, as this episode reaches its close, what I want to make clear … is, well, what isn’t. And that is why exactly the Roman empire ceased to be a slave society. There are various theories, but no consensus.
Transitional Beat
One theory is that society in the east was simply arranged differently than the west. And that the empire, for a long time, hadn’t been expanding. It had been shrinking due to barbarian encroachment. This meant not only a reduction in the massive imports of prisoners-of-war, and a less wealthy state in general, but that the enslaved people, who for generations had been part of Roman families and communities, were now woven into the matrices of Roman life. And often, as now freed people.
Some historians point to what’s known as ‘the colonate,’ which was a fiscal system created in the fourth century that tied rural laborers, or tenants, to the land … in a move to raise both land and poll taxes. Now, if that sounds a little bit like a sort of proto-feudalism … you would not be the first. Some view the colonate as the steppingstone between Byzantine enslavement practices and the serfdom of the Middle Ages.
I’m just going to say that among those who hold PhDs in this subject, and I for sure do not, the colonate-steppingstone-theory is … contentious.
Transitional Beat
The urge to have this neat narrative is strong. But I simply don’t have one to give you.
What I can say about the Middle Ages, however, is that enslavement didn’t … go away. It never went away. Slave trading systems simply evolved. And because there was no longer a large, unified Roman Empire. There was no longer a one-size fits all.
According to historian Alice Rio in her book, Slavery After Rome, the medieval peak for trading the enslaved was between the ninth and tenth centuries in the wake of two fundamentally new phenomena. The coming together of a vast Viking raiding and trading network, coupled with the massive demand for slaves from the Muslim world.
The Middle Ages also introduced a new tendency. And that is a much, much stronger correlation between enslavement and race.
Enslaving what were seen as innately inferior groups began to be fashioned as justification for the practice in a way that it really hadn’t prior.
In the Middle Ages, this tendency became so prevalent with certain groups, that their race became synonymous with the condition itself.
The most famous instance of this was: The Slavs.
Or in Latin, sclavus. The Slavs were captured and traded as slaves in such large numbers that it’s just what all slaves were called, and continue to be called, in English, most western European languages, and Arabic, to this very day.
Outro/Wrap
Research, scripting, narration, editing and mixing for this episode were all done by me, Christine Laskowski.
Scoring and musical arrangements for T&J were also written and performed by me in collaboration with the immeasurable, Jack Butler. The T&J logo was designed by Meredith Montgomery.
Procopius of Caesarea was voiced by Michael de la Bedoyere. Ulpian by Andrew Hyams, Tacitus by Joshua Carrington, Justinian by Oliver Sachgau, Roman Bill of Sale No. 1 by Noah Harley, Roman Bill of Sale No. 2 by Ruairi Casey, Ammianus Marcellinus by Smitti Supab, the children’s Latin language exercises were voiced by Elliot Holcomb and Tommy Holcomb, Libanius was voiced by Victor Panwal, and the owner of the runaway by Dan Chinoy. The revisitation of the Roman sycophant and the Vandal King Gelimer by by Nathan Ma and Roman Kratochvila, respectively.
Special thanks to David Parnell for his notes and feedback.
Another Houston High School pedagogue shout out. This time to my African American Lit teacher, Karen Garrison, who we all knew and loved as Mama G, and to my concert choir director, Ron Norton, who opened up my world to Mozart and spirituals.
Additional sources for this episode are available in the show notes.
Now, I’m doing something a little different with the outro song this time. I’m adding my own melody – and some lyrics – to a song excerpted from Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave.
In Chapter Two, Douglass writes:
‘The home plantation of Colonel Lloyd wore the appearance of a country village. All the mechanical operations for all the farms were performed here. The shoemaking and mending, the blacksmithing, cartwriting, coopering, weaving, and grain-grinding, were all performed by the slaves on the home plantation. The whole place wore a business-like aspect very unlike the neighboring farms. The number of houses, too, conspired to give it advantage over the neighboring farms. It was called by the slaves the Great House Farm.
Few privileges were esteemed higher, by the slaves of the out-farms, than that of being selected to do errands at the Great House Farm …
They regarded it as evidence of great confidence reposed in them by their overseers; and it was on this account, as well as a constant desire to be out of the field from under the driver’s lash, that they esteemed it a high privilege, one worth careful living for …
The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as they went along, consulting neither time and tune … Into all of their songs they would manage to weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially they would do this when leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following words:
I am going away to the Great House Farm! O, yea! O, yea! O! I am going away to the Great House Farm! O, yea! O, yea! O! One day I’ll go to where they’ll do me no harm But today, I’m going to the Great House Farm O, yea! O, yea! O!
… I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear.
They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains … To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery.’