Slavery - Slave Agency Flashcards
What slave strategies were there to gain agency?
Resistance to their enslavement in conflict with their master
- Forms of open resistance with the goal of escaping enslavement (violence/open revolt against their owners on a small or large scale, running away)
- Less open resistance meant to go undetected (shirking duties, stealing, sabotage)
Using whatever bargaining power they had to make their lives more comfortable in collaboration with their master (especially evident with e.g. wealthy slaves)
Forming relationships around them and (connected to this) a sense of individual identity and membership of a collective identity
- Family
- Participation in communities
What is the literary evidence for slave strategies and what are its problems?
Literary evidence - almost entirely written by the freeborn and entirely by freepersons. As such, not overly interested in slave strategies and, when it is, often uninformed on the issue and always biased
What is the archaeological evidence for slave strategies and what are its problems?
Archaeological Evidence – Invaluable in spaces we know from literary sources were occupied by slaves (e.g. workshops, mines) but can be of limited use elsewhere
What is the epigraphic evidence for slave strategies and what are its problems?
Epigraphic Evidence – Has its own problems (often very little information devoid of wider context on their own). However, from this type of evidence we have the actual writing of slaves.
What theories and ideas can we borrow from scholars outside of ancient history?
Intense scholarly interest in slavery (especially in the Americas and the Atlantic slave trade) has had a significant influence on how we view slavery
E.g. Paternalism - infantilization of slaves; slavery as a way of ‘protecting’ slaves
Orlando Patterson - ‘Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study’:
Paternalism is consistent across slave owning societies
How are ethnic identities of slaves represented in classical Athens?
Literary sources sometimes portray the ethnicities of slaves as an important part of their identity, such as this slave character in a fragment of Menander:
All Thracians, and especially we Getae—for I myself proudly claim to be of that tribe—are not terribly self-controlled…for we never marry fewer than ten or eleven women—and some marry twelve or more. And if somebody dies with only four or five wives, he is regarded among the people there as an unmarried, unhappy bachelor. (Menander fr. 877)
Were there any slave communities in Athens?
Very little evidence for it
Masters seemed to have wanted to curb it as much as possible (consider the remarks about enforcing hierarchies and not having too many slaves of the same nation on an estate)
Slaves dedications to foreign gods in Greek epigraphy, however, demonstrate that such communities did exist and were connected to some sense of ethnic identity.
What was the gravestone of Atotas the Miner?
First discovered in 1888 in Laurion, Athen’s major silver mining region, though it was lost after the Second World War
Either made of marble or chalkstone - but either way an intricate monument and very expensive
Second half of the fourth century BC, but looks like an earlier more monumental gravestone
Commemorates, as stated in its epitaph, a Paphlagonian named Atotas. The inscription does not mention his status, but Atotas was very probably a slave (although not certainly - and he may also have been freed)
“I am from the stem of Pylaemenes who died subdues by the hand of Achilles”
What are two stock slave names?
Manes and Sosias
What became a hub for slaves?
Many slaves were forced to work in the prostitution industry (as did many free people by choice or out of economic necessity)
But also, it seems, many slaves who could get time/money visited brothels, as we know they did for certain in better documented slave-owning societies
A line from The Little Carthaginian by the Roman playwright Plautus derides prostitutes “whom hardly any free man has ever touched or taken home, the two obul sluts of dirty little slaves”
What graffiti was found on brothel walls in Pompeii?
“When I came here, I fucked, and then I returned home” CIL IV 2246
“Victoria the unconquerable here”
Disputes/jokes between slaves?
“Syneros fucks well” carved in Greek, as well as “Mola the fucktress”
Why were brothels popular with slaves?
Graffiti also seemed to demonstrate the ability to perform masculinity they were otherwise denied by having sex and then publicly boast about it
