Authors: Robert C. Knapp
Chapter 4
There are many good resources on Roman-Grecian slavery. Fundamental are Thomas E. J. Wiedemann,
Greek and Roman Slavery: A Sourcebook
(Baltimore: Routledge, 1990), and the numerous works of Keith Bradley
such as
Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987);
Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World, 140 BC – 70 BC
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); and
Slavery and Society at Rome
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), all of which provide much further bibliography. Now see also the excellent treatment by Sandra Joshel,
Slavery in the Roman World
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). M. I. Finley’s
Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology
with a new preface by Brent D. Shawn (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1998) remains very important. For a short general treatment, there is Yvon Thébert, ‘The Slave,’ in
The Romans,
ed. Andrea Giardina, trans. L. G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 138–74. Jennifer A. Glancy’s
Slavery in Early Christianity
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) has many good observations; Sandra Joshel’s
Work, Identity, and Legal Status at Rome
(Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992) set studies in a new direction. For thinking about resistance and its embodiments, James Scott’s
Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985) is stimulating and his observations about peasants aid greatly the understanding of slaves’ lives in slavery. For the archaeology, see F. H. Thompson,
The Archaeology of Greek and Roman Slavery
(London: Duckworth, 2003). For comparative material in the United States, W. Blassingame’s
The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979) conveniently gathers much information, as does Mary C. Karasch’s
Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987) for Brazil; Jane Webster’s ‘Less Beloved: Roman Archaeology, Slavery and the Failure to Compare,’
Archaeological Dialogues
15 (2008), 103–23, critiques archaeological and comparative evidence. Peter Garnsey’s
Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996) treats elite concepts of slavery, while William Fitzgerald’s
Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000) is most enlightening with regard to the elite’s use of slavery in literature. Niall McKeown’s
The Invention of Ancient Slavery?
(London: Duckworth, 2007) is a stimulating assessment of various approaches to Romano-Grecian slavery by modern scholars; he reveals how much a particular study of slavery is determined by the predispositions a scholar brings to it.
Of articles, Keith Hopkins’s ‘Novel Evidence for Roman Slavery,’
Past and Present
138 (1993), 3–27, put
The Life of Aesop
on the map as evidence for slavery; Keith Bradley’s ‘Animalizing the Slave: The Truth of Fiction,’
Journal of Roman Studies
90 (2000), 110–25, helps to understand the use of fiction to discover slaves. Patricia Clark’s ‘The Family of St. Augustine,’ in
Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture: Differential Equations,
ed. Sandra R. Joshel and Sheila Murnaghan (London: Rout-ledge, 1998), pp. 109–29, describes Augustine’s family’s dysfunctional life, including interactions with slaves; late but still relevant material on Egypt is found in Roger S. Bagnall, ‘Slavery and Society in Late Roman Egypt,’ in
Law, Politics and Society in the Ancient Mediterranean World,
ed. B. Halpern and D. Hobson (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), pp. 220–40.
Chapter 5
The fullest treatment of freedmen and expression of the elite-skewed viewpoint is found in A. M. Duff,
Freedmen in the Early Roman Empire
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928); for a succinct statement, there is Jean Andreau, ‘The Freedman,’ in
The Romans,
ed. Andrea Giardina, trans. L.G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 175–98. Sandra Joshel’s
Work, Identity, and Legal Status at Rome: A Study of the Occupational Inscriptions
(Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992) is fundamental to reassessing the skewed viewpoint; H. Mouritsen’s ‘Freedmen and Decurions: Epitaphs and Social History in Imperial Italy,’
Journal of Roman Studies
95 (2005), 38–63, reorients against that traditional view as well; see his
The Freedman in the Roman World
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), which appeared too late to be used here. On aspects of imperial freedmen, excluded from this essay, see Paul Weaver,
Familia Caesaris: A Study of the Emperor’s Freedmen and Slaves
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1972). For demographic questions, works by W. Scheidel are reliable; essays by Peter Garnsey, especially ‘Independent Freedmen and the Economy of Roman Italy under the Principate,’
Klio
63 (1981), 359–71, are always edifying. For ‘freedman art,’ see Lauren Hackworth Petersen’s stimulating treatment in
The Freedman in Roman Art and Art History
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Brazilian
comparative material is from Mary C. Karasch,
Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
Chapter 6
It is appropriate here to pay homage to Ramsay MacMullen, who with his 1963 volume
Soldier and Civilian in the Later Roman Empire
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) paved the way for looking at soldiers as more than cogs in a fighting machine, worthy to be studied as a social as well as a military phenomenon. Good general treatments that deal with common soldiers as real people can be found in J. M. Carrié, ‘The Soldier,’ in
The Romans,
ed. Andrea Giardina, trans. L. G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 100–137, and in B. A. Campbell,
War and Society in Imperial Rome 31 BC–AD 284
(London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 25–46, 77–105. R. Alston’s
Soldier and Society in Roman Egypt: A Social History
(London: Routledge, 1995) is full of good material from Egypt which has wider application; Sara Elise Phang’s
Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) offers a wealth of evidence. Basic sources are conveniently collected and translated in B. A. Campbell,
The Roman Army, 31 BC–AD 337: A Sourcebook
(London: Routledge, 1994). For demographic thoughts, see Walter Scheidel, ‘Marriage, Families, and Survival,’ in
The Blackwell Companion to the Roman Army,
ed. Paul Erdkamp (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 417–34; and for much on marriage, sex, and family life, see Sara Elise Phang,
The Marriage of Roman Soldiers (13 B.C. – A.D. 235): Law and Family in the Imperial Army,
Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 24 (Leiden: Brill, 2001).
Chapter 7
The most direct and complete access to detailed material on prostitution in the Romano-Grecian world is found in the numerous works of Thomas A. McGinn:
Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998);
The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman Empire
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004); and, forthcoming,
Roman Prostitution.
Rebecca Fleming’s ‘Quae
corpore quaestum facit [‘She who makes money from her body’]: The Sexual Economy of Female Prostitution in the Roman Empire,’
Journal of Roman Studies
89 (1999), 38–61, is also fundamental. Briefer treatments are found in Jane F. Gardner,
Women in Roman Law and Society
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), and Sarah B. Pomeroy,
Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity
(New York: Schocken, 1975), who gives a more generalized classical world context. For the nonexistence of sacred prostitutes, see Stephanie Budin,
The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008). John R. Clarke deals adroitly with the evidence of art for the study of Roman attitudes toward sex (and much else in the lives of ordinary folk); among his many works see especially
Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art 100 B.C. – A.D. 250
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998);
Looking at Laughter: Humor, Power, and Transgression in Roman Visual Culture, 100 B.C. – A.D. 250
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); and
Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and the Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C. – A.D. 315
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); of a glossier nature is his
Roman Sex
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003). For medical information, see Mirko D. Grmek,
Diseases in the Ancient Greek World,
trans. Mireille Muellner and Leonard Muellner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 132–51; on contraception and abortion, see Plinio Prioreschi, ‘Contraception and Abortion in the Greco-Roman World,’
Vesalius
1 (1995), 77–87. The Egyptian material cited comes from
Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook,
ed. Jane Rowlandson (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Chapter 8
There has never been a lack of material on gladiators. All recent work goes back ultimately to two mid-century French studies, which accumulated most of the fundamental documentation: Louis Robert,
Les gladiateurs dans l’Orient grec
(Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Études, Ive section, Sciences historiques et philologiques fasc. 278, Paris: Champion, 1940), and George Ville,
La gladiature en occident des origines à la mort de Domitien
(Rome: École Française de Rome, 1981(mostly written by
1967)). The best of the last twenty years includes Thomas Wiedemann,
Emperors and Gladiators
(London: Routledge, 1992); D. S. Potter and D. J. Mattingly,
Life, Death, and Entertainment in the Roman Empire
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999); Alison Futrell,
Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997); Donald G. Kyle,
Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome
(London: Routledge, 1998); and Alison Futrell once again,
The Roman Games: A Sourcebook,
Blackwell Sourcebooks in Ancient History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005). For readers concerned to know what the last twenty years have revealed about the postmodern cultural meaning of the arena and its players – an aspect of the games not treated here – these books will also provide useful bibliography in that regard.
Of the many articles on gladiators, of particular use are two by Valerie Hope, ‘Negotiating Identity and Status: The Gladiators of Roman Nîmes,’ in
Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire,
ed. J. Berry and R. Laurence (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 179–95, and ‘Fighting for Identity: The Funerary Commemoration of Italian Gladiators,’ in
The Epigraphic Landscape of Roman Italy, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
Supplement 73 (2000), ed. A. E. Cooley, pp. 93–113. On female gladiators, Dominique Briquel’s ‘Les femmes gladiateurs: examen du dossier,’
Ktema
17 (1992), 47–53, is fundamental while an English summary of the material can be found in A. McCullough, ‘Female Gladiators in Imperial Rome: Literary Context and Historical Fact,’
Classical World
101 (2008), 197–209.
Chapter 9
On bandits the best short introductions are Brent Shawn, ‘The Bandit,’ in
The Romans,
ed. Andrea Giardina, trans. L. G. Cochrane (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993), pp. 300–341, and his ‘Outlaws, Aliens and Outcasts,’ in
The Cambridge Ancient History,
2nd edn, Vol. 11, ed. A. K. Bowman et al. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 382–405. Werner Riess’s
Apuleius und die Räuber: Ein Beitrag zur historischen Kriminalitätsforschung
(Stuttgart: Heidelberger Althistorische Beiträge und Epigraphische Studien 35, 2001) lays out fully the convincing arguments for being able to see ‘real’ bandits in Romano-Grecian history; his ‘Between Fiction and Reality: Robbers in Apuleius’
Golden Ass,’ Ancient Narrative
1 (2000–2001), 260–82, is an English summary of his main points. Thomas Grünewald’s
Bandits in the Roman Empire: Myth and Reality
(London and New York: Routledge, 1999) denies an ability to see the ‘real’ bandits and argues for only a ‘myth’ being retrievable from antiquity. For piracy in particular, P. de Souza’s
Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World
(Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999) is a good introduction to the evidence. For a rather imaginative treatment of pirate life, see Nicholas K. Rauh,
Merchants, Sailors and Pirates in the Roman World
(Charleston, SC: Tempest Publishing, 2003). Groundbreaking work in seeing outlaws as a social phenomenon appears in Ramsay MacMullen,
Enemies of the Roman Order
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967); comparative material for bandits in Eric Hobsbawm,
The Bandit
(New York: Delacourt Press, 1969); and for pirates, Marcus Rediker,
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989),
Chapter 6
: ‘The Seaman as Pirate: Plunder and Social Banditry at Sea,’ pp. 254–87. The romances are easily accessible in
Collected Ancient Greek Novels,
ed. B. P. Reardon et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).