Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-g5fl4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-02T03:13:16.000Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

IV. Slaves as Producers and Servants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

Get access

Extract

To see slavery primarily as a social institution does not imply that no important economic consequences flowed from it. Slavery extends the slave-owner’s capacity to do by means of his slave anything that he chooses to do; depending on the values and priorities of owners, slaves may be made to perform all sorts of functions, including economic ones, but it is only where the profit motive takes precedence over all other values, as in Western capitalism, that slaves will be treated primarily as a ‘working class’. Much of the scholarship concerning itself with Greek and Roman slavery has assumed that the primary function of the institution was economic, a means of providing cheap labour as in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the southern United States. But the economic role of slaves in the ancient world should be seen in the context of the history of the ancient economy in general. While slavery was not the ‘cause’ of any distinctive developments, it made it possible for slave-owners to react much more quickly to changes in the economy than they would have been able to if they had had to rely on autonomous or ‘free’ labour which would have had to be persuaded of the need for any changes.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 19: Slavery , 1987 , pp. 30 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Two interesting analyses: M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy; Hopkins, K., Conquerors and Slaves. Cf. also Garnsey, P., Hopkins, K. & Whittaker, C. R. (eds.), Trade in the Ancient Economy (London, 1983)Google Scholar.

2. For the traditional view, cf.Heitland, W. E., Agricola (Cambridge, 1921), pp. 203-12Google Scholar.

3. Garnsey, P. & Whittaker, C. R. (eds.), Non-Slave Labour in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Cambridge, 1980)Google Scholar.

4. Herdsmen in particular were at the ‘margins’ of city-centred social life in antiquity, and thus characteristically slaves (e.g. Eumaeus, p. 12 above). Cf. Varro, de agrie. 2.10 ( = GARS 150); Diodorus Siculus’ account of the origins of the Sicilian slave rebellions, 34.2.27ff. ( = GARS 229). Supervision was a major problem in a world where high status depended on landownership, yet implied participation in the political and social life of the urban agora or forum. Here too slavery provided a solution, by enabling the owner to be notionally in several places at once, through the person of a slave manager (epitropos, vilicus). Cf.Jameson, M. H., ‘Agriculture and Slavery in Classical Athens’, CJ 73 (1977/78), 122-45Google Scholar; Beare, R., ‘Were Bailiffs ever Free-born?’, CQ 28 (1978), 398–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Manacorda, D., ‘The Ager Cosanus and the production of the Amphorae of Sestius’, JRS 68 (1978), 122-31Google Scholar; Rathbone, D. W., ‘The Development of Agriculture in the ‘Ager Cosanus’ during the Roman Republic: Problems of Evidence and Interpretation’, JRS 71 (1981), 10–23 Google Scholar; id., ‘The Slave Mode of Production in Italy’ (Review article), JRS 1? (1983), 160-68.

6. Goldin, C. D., Urban Slavery m the American South 1820-1860 (Chicago, 1976)Google Scholar.

7. Randall, R. H., ‘The Erechtheum Workmen’, AJA 57 (1953), 199–210 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burford, A., ‘The Builders of the Parthenon’, Parthenos and Parthenon (G & R, Suppl. vol. 10, 1963), 23–35.Google Scholar

8. Webster, T. B. L., Potter and Patron in Classical Athens (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Prachner, G., Die Sklaven und Freigelassene im arretinischen Sigillatagewerbe (Wiesbaden, 1980)Google Scholar; Harris, W. V., ‘Roman Terracotta Lamps: the Organization of an Industry’, JRS 70 (1980), 126-45Google Scholar; Tapio, H., Organization of Roman Brick Production (Helsinki, 1975)Google Scholar.

9. E.g. Vogt, Ancient Slavery, chs. 5 and 6; Christes, J., Sklaven und Freigelassene als Grammatiker und Philologen im antiken Rom (Wiesbaden, 1979)Google Scholar; Vogt, J., ‘Nomenciator’, Gymnasium 85 (1978), 327-38Google Scholar = Sklaverei und Humanität. Ergänzungsheft (Wiesbaden, 1983), pp. 36ff.

10. Bogaert, R., Banques et Banquiers dans les cités grecques (Leiden, 1968)Google Scholar; Veyne, R., ‘Vie de Trimalcion’, Annales E.S.C. 166 (1961), 213–47 Google Scholar; D’Arms, J. H., Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, Mass., 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Garnsey, P., ‘Independent Freedmen and the Economy of Roman Italy under the Principate’, Klio 63 (1981), 359-71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Most recently Booth, A. D., ‘The Schooling of Slaves in First-Century Rome’, TAPhA 109 (1979), 11–19.Google Scholar

12. Christes, n. 9 above.

13. Seneca, Ep. 21.5f. (= GARS 132).

14. Vogt, J., ‘Alphabet für Freie und Sklaven’, Rh.Mus. 116 (1973), 129-42Google Scholar = Sklaverei und Humanität. Ergänzungshéeft (Wiesbaden, 1983), pp. 17-27. But cf. Aristotle on a Syracusan slave-teacher: Pol. 1.2.22 ( = GARS2, p. 21).

15. Lauffer, S., Die Bergwerkssklaven von Laureion (Wiesbaden, 1979 2)Google Scholar; generally, Healy, J. F., Mining and Metallurgy in the Greek and Roman World (London, 1978)Google Scholar. Despite more recent work, Davies, O., Roman Mines in Europe (Oxford, 1935)Google Scholar, has not been superseded, and was reprinted in M. I. Finley’s Ancient Economic History series (New York, 1979).

16. ILS 6891. Flach, D., ‘Die Bergwerksordnungen von Vipasca’, Chiron 9 (1979), 399–448.Google Scholar

17. I am aware of no modern monograph on servi poenae.