become a slave. In political theory and popular discourse the
concept of slavery was an important one for the defi nition
of citizenship, since the slave was everything the citizen was
not: unfree, forced to labor for another, and lacking enforce-
able rights.ROME
BY PAUL MCKECHNIE
Most slaves in Rome were foreign in origin, captured in war
or bought in slave markets. In the early days it was also pos-
sible for a Roman citizen to become a slave; the Twelve Ta-
bles (a code of laws of the early Roman Republic, established
around 450 b.c.e.) allowed a creditor who was not paid to sell
the debtor “beyond the Tiber” as a slave. Within Roman ter-
ritory it was possible for loan agreements to involve a kind of
voluntary mortgage on the debtor’s person (nexum). A bor-
rower who failed to pay became a debt bondsman but was
still a Roman citizen of a sort and not exactly the property
of the creditor. Th e historian Livy (59 b.c.e.–17 c.e.) tells of
the abolition of nexum in his Annals of the Roman People.
Livy’s account describes public outrage at the sexual abuse of
a debt bondsman, whereas the sexual abuse of a slave would
not have provoked such outrage. An important disadvantage
of the system was that it made Roman debt bondsmen ineli-
gible to fi ght in the Roman army. Th e lex Poetilia Papiria, a
law passed in 326 b.c.e., ended the system of nexum.
Slaves, as distinct from debt bondsmen, were the prop-
erty of their masters and could be bought and sold. In princi-
ple, they had no rights at all and could be punished or abused
exactly as their masters chose. Th e emperor Antoninus Pius
(r. 138–161 c.e.) changed the law that had given masters the
power of life and death over their slaves and introduced the
principle that if a master killed his slave without good reason,
he would be subject to the same penalty as if he had killed
another person’s slave; in eff ect, he could be fi ned up to the
value of the slave.
Slaves were a source of unpaid labor anywhere for the Ro-
mans: in homes, in agriculture, and in supporting the army.
Th ey were not expected or trusted to fi ght for Rome. Slaves who
survived being captured in war were usually women and chil-
dren because it was normal for men captured in war to be put
to death if there was no one to pay a ransom for them; keeping
them alive was a risk their captors would not usually take.
In the third and (especially) the second centuries b.c.e.
the Romans’ successes in expanding their conquests across
the Mediterranean resulted in a great infl ux of slaves to Italy.
Th e Roman upper classes were able to buy larger estates and
work them with slave gangs. Th e disadvantage was that one
had to be a landowner to serve in the army, and as Roman and
Italian peasants sold their property to the rich their absence
from the military ranks threatened to weaken Rome. Gaius
Marius (ca. 157–86 b.c.e.), who was consul seven times be-
tween 107 and 86, solved this problem by making it possible
for unpropertied Romans to join the army.Although they could not fi ght for the army, slaves could be
made to fi ght for sport. Gladiators, who fought in the amphi-
theaters, were usually either slaves or condemned criminals.
Along with his law discouraging killing slaves, Antoninus
Pius legislated against sending a slave to the gladiator school
without a good reason; making a slave into a gladiator was a
punishment virtually equivalent to death.
Life for most slaves was diffi cult most of the time, but the
Roman system of slavery had features that presented oppor-
tunities for some slaves. A slave could own no property, but
Roman law recognized something called a peculium, which
was in eff ect a slave’s own money. In a case where, for ex-
ample, a master went into business with his slave, the fact that
some of the capital behind the business was the slave’s pecu-
lium might prevent the master from being liable for all legal
claims that might arise against the slave in the course of busi-
ness. Even though the idea behind a peculium was perhaps
to protect masters from liability for their slaves’ mistakes, in
practice a successful slave might manage to use his peculium
to buy his freedom from his master.
During the Imperial Period (aft er 31 b.c.e.) the Romans
seem to have freed many of their slaves. Th e emperor Augus-
tus (r. 27 b.c.e.–14 c.e.) was behind the lex Fufi a Caninia of
2 c.e., a law that limited the number of slaves a master could
manumit in his lifetime, and the lex Aelia Sentia of 4 c.e.,
which made 30 the minimum age at which a slave could be
manumitted. When the slave of a Roman citizen was manu-
mitted, he became a Roman citizen himself. Slaves had one
name, while characteristically Roman citizens had three
names: praenomen (fi rst name), nomen gentilicium (family
name), and cognomen (last name). A freedman (libertus or
libertinus) had his original name as his cognomen, and he took
his fi rst two citizen names from his former master. Freedmen
had most of the rights of freeborn Roman citizens—for exam-
ple, the right to vote, to make wills, to marry Roman citizens,
and to produce legitimate-citizen children—but they could
not hold political offi ce.
Slaves were important at the very heart of the Roman Em-
pire. When the fi rst emperor, Augustus, took over, he used his
own slaves and the resources of his own household to adminis-
ter the empire by, for example, making appointments, keeping
accounts, directing the army, keeping records, and managing
relations with the Senate and political offi ceholders.
He and later emperors based bureaus that were virtu-
ally government ministries in the palace under the direc-
tion of their own freedmen: Th e ab epistulis (minister of the
provinces) managed correspondence with Roman governors
across the empire; the a rationibus (minister of fi nance) kept
the emperor’s accounts; and the a libellis (minister of justice)
processed the petitions that came to the emperor from across
the world. As the fi rst and second centuries c.e. went forward,
emperors brought in Roman knights instead of freedmen to
hold many important posts in the palace, but they were cau-
tious enough to keep the money in the hands of someone they
could rely on—one of their own freedmen.slaves and slavery: Rome 9930895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i993 993 10/10/07 2:30:41 PM