Talk:Slavery in ancient Rome

Outline structure
I took some steps toward what I hope to be a more topical approach. Defining the legal status of the servus is critical in understanding the Roman institution, and what's most distinctive in Roman society is the role of freedmen. Without that kind of structure, the article risks devolving into a list of grievances about how awful slavery was. I'm confident that we all know slavery is wrong. One problem in trying to improve this article is that if the structure isn't solid, you end up with recursive portions and leaping around randomly. (And one problem with casual contributors is that they tend to drop their info as early as possible into the article instead of looking at where it most logically or topically fits.)

One section that I saw a need for is to answer the question "Who were the enslaved?/Where did slaves come from?" in a more cohesive way, which had been covered in the non-sequential "Slavery and warfare," "Auctions and sales," and "Debt slavery." So I consolidated that under "The slave trade," though much work still needs to be done. The vernae need their own section too. The needed section "Children as slaves" would follow "Debt slavery.

And as always in these broad articles about "ancient Rome" spanning a thousand years or more, generalizations inserted by well-meaning contributors often fail to distinguish between practices in the semilegendary Regal period and early Republic (for which most evidence comes, often nostalgically, from the late Republican writers), the middle, best-documented period from the Punic Wars through Constantine, and the later imperial period characterized by the rise of Christianity. So every overview section probably needs to follow either some kind of early-middle-late chronological developmental structure, or organization according to status of the enslaved—differences, for example, between those condemned to slavery and those reared in slavery but given a high degree of education or training and agency, most famously Tiro. There's still stuff scattered, but I'm not one to complain without pitching in and getting my hands dirty, so all discussion is welcome. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:32, 1 July 2023 (UTC)


 * So good to see. Yes, we badly need to be clear that practices, and laws too, went through changes. Thanks too for the stucture of the slave trade section (I left abandonment with nexum only as a rough temporary grouping of two ways freeborn Romans might be enslaved). I've realised we say nothing there about import from outside Rome's hegemony. McKeown says Scheidel estimates imports to be quite minor and that Harris criticises that, but I don't know if they're talking about the full Empire or including the period before Rome controlled the eastern Mediterranean. NebY (talk) 15:52, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Harris and Scheidel had quite a scholarly feud going on this topic, it seems. To my mind, nothing renders an article that's of interest to the general reader more unreadable than "he said, she said" scholarship! So I hope we can find a way to dodge that. Generally, though (and I did see a good summation of this somewhere that I'll try to locate), there's consensus on where enslaved people come from (and agree, trade across the frontiers should be added)—just not on the proportions of the slave population each source contributed. Especially since it changes over time. After receiving a certain amount of scholarly excoriation, Harris later steps back somewhat on his speculation about how great a source of slaves child exposure was (child exposure being his actual topic), though standing by it to some degree.
 * BTW, do you know the established era-designation style for this article? I've been totally random depending on the source. Cynwolfe (talk) 00:02, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, I feel for our sort of overview we want to indicate which were the major sources, fascinating though the debate may be (your welcome summaries and citations in the article and news about Harris could utterly distract me).
 * The first era designation I've found is BC in 2007, though my sampling might have missed one if it was quickly removed. In 2011 a little BCE/CE is added but by then there are several more BC/ADs. NebY (talk) 13:14, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I remember participating in extraordinarily heated debates over era conventions ten to fifteen years ago, and I absolutely do not care, except for consistency of copyediting. Well, and on grounds of disruption when someone who hasn't been contributing to an article drops by just to "make a point". And when people who don't contribute to articles that move back and forth from the 2nd/1st century BC/BCE and 1st/2nd century AD/CE insist that you can't use AD/CE even to make it clear to readers what century we're in, if there are still warriors who do that. I marginally prefer BC/AD just because as symbols they read as more sharply differentiated, but again, not something I care about. I am happy to go through and render the eras consistently if we have a consensus, as I have been dropping in text and captions willy-nilly with the era convention in the source and am undoubtedly the primary befouler. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:16, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, one of the eternal debates. I think, on the evidence, it should be BC/AD. I also don't have strong feelings, but I think a change to first page usage should be based on some kind of evidence (e.g. that the vast majority of papers and histories on the subject are using CE/BCE). Absent that, I think first page usage has it. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 17:06, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! When I have a minute when I want to do something that isn't mentally taxing, I'll go through and fix this, since I'm pretty sure I've done the major mucking up. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:39, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Great! I no longer have a preference, just whatever keeps the truce and can be quickly explained to new editors set on changing all Wikipedia's instances of this to that, or vice versa. Curiously, WP:ERA says "an article's established era style" rather than "first" as in other matters, which keeps surprising me. So I'll document it here just in case: it was swapped to BCE/CE on 9 January 2014, then back to BC/AD on 19 September 2018, both times with no discussion before or afterwards. If it was ever switched to BCE/CE again, that didn't last for any appreciable time, at the end of 2022 there was only one stray instance of BCE/CE in the article, and it only has 6 now, oops, none, sorry. NebY (talk) 00:51, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Revolving stands
I've found a reference we could use for "sometimes slaves stood on revolving stands", but should we? Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities (1898) has for Catasta "A raised platform upon which slaves were exposed for sale, so that the intending purchasers might more readily examine their points (Tibull. ii. 3, 60; Pers. vi. 77). The platform was sometimes made to revolve, as appears from Statius ( Silv. ii. 1 Silv., 72)...." The Statius line (Silvae 2.1.72) is "non te barbaricae versabat turbo catastae" - very very roughly, "the storm/spinning-top of the barbaric sale-platform was not turning you". I can't judge whether Statius is being literal, metaphorical ("rota fortunae" became a cliché), or even merely describing slaves being made to turn around, but I've tried looking for other mentions of the catasta and keep failing to find mention of it turning. Sandra Joshel, for example, mentions the catasta several times in chapter 4, The Sale of Slaves, in her Slavery in the Roman World, describing quite vividly how slaves were presented on it, but without ever mentioning it revolving. Is it worth including something so weakly attested that others omit it? NebY (talk) 15:33, 4 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I don't have a strong opinion on this but agree that the turning is possibly a poetic trope (ha, pardon the pun). Sometimes the old reference works have these little nuggets, though, that no one's paid attention to since. Would be nice if another secondary source turns up. Cynwolfe (talk) 00:20, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * (Oh well played.) Yes, and I'll keep an eye out. For now, I'm inclined to drop it into a footnote rather than start the sentence with something uncertain and tagged, when the following can be fairly easily referenced - which I could make a start on too, though not immediately. NebY (talk) 12:43, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Emancipation - heading or anchor
We currently have a subsection heading Emancipation, followed by a sentence explaining that emancipatio had nothing to do with slavery in ancient Rome. We keep the heading because a hidden note explains "Please keep this subheading. Other articles link to it, and its meaning is precise." That note was placed in 2010, when another editor had tried changing the heading to Freedom. The section now concerns manumission, an even more precise term. Should we place a hidden Anchor for emancipation,, there and rename the section Manumission? Incoming links would still work and we wouldn't have to start with a digression. NebY (talk) 18:36, 16 July 2023 (UTC)


 * ✅ NebY (talk) 18:10, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Rebellions or revulsion
Wondering if we mentioned the time Roman crowds delayed the execution of four hundred slaves, I was surprised to find the case of Lucius Pedanius Secundus in #Rebellions instead, along with that of Larcius Macedo. The former was killed by a single slave; the killers of the latter fled but didn't raise a revolt. Our source, Bradley, mentions both as examples of "smaller outbursts of violence from slaves against masters", supporting his argument that the Sicilian uprisings were not "intended to be massive from the outset" but grew from such small-scale acts of desperation; he himself doesn't call those two events uprisings, though we do. Emma Southon describes the case of Pedanius Secundus as "one of those moments with Tacitus where he presents a behaviour as stupid and laughable to his Roman aristocratic audience and assumes they'll agree with him but which modern audiences read entirely differently." A riot besieged the Senate, then with stones and torches delayed the execution. Nero rebuked them by edict and had troops line the route, but mercifully vetoed the expulsion of Pedanius' freedmen (three years previously in 58, says Southon, the law requiring the death of the slaves had been renewed to include the death of the freedmen). Mouritsen mentions the event as an example of "anecdotal evidence for solidarity between freedmen (even slaves) and the rest of the plebs". We mention panic among slaveholders but not that popular response. Would it be appropriate to mention it there or even mention the murders and executions under a different heading (presumably much more briefly than this)? NebY (talk) 20:27, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Female slaves and manumission
This edit and the preceding text reminded me of a quandary mentioned by Marc Kleijwegt, more clearly attested in New World slavery, that "most masters were reluctant to free entire family units" so women who might otherwise be happy to accept freedom had to leave others behind. Evidence is doubly scant, of course. As for Laes's survey showing "more than 30 percent of women traded were of prime childbearing age (20 to 25)", I can't help wondering (I don't have access) if perhaps it was 30+% of trades instead, suggesting some were acquired for the short term and resold. NebY (talk) 20:01, 1 September 2023 (UTC)