Week 6 (April 29-May3)

  • Due No Due Date
  • Points None

We continue looking at personal freedom in ancient Rome, turning now to the large and complex topic of slaves and slavery.

→Please note that Quiz #1 is due Monday, April 29, by 11:00 PM

  • To read (required):

Epictetus, On Freedom.  Click HERE for a pdf of this text.

☞A seminal text for an understanding of libertas in general, On Freedom is especially relevant because its author, Epictetus (ca. AD 55-135), was an ex-slave.  As a young man he was a slave to a wealthy freedman of the emperor Nero; after manumission, he went on to have a distinguished career as a well-known philosopher who enjoyed close relations with more than one Roman emperor.  On Freedom is practically the only text we have from ancient Rome written by someone who had had the experience of being a slave, and thus his perspective is unique. This text, by the way, is the topic of this week's paper.   You might find the good Wikipedia article about him. interesting reading.  

Appian (our old friend!), The Civil Wars, Book 1.116-121 on the revolt of Spartacus, a slave who led a 'servile war' from 73-71 BC.  CLICK HERE FOR A PDF (apologies for the quality of the scan, but it's only a couple of pages).

☞As you read this text, give some thought to why, according to Appian, Spartacus led a slave revolt...and to what this episode and Appian's narrative tells us about Roman slavery.  What grievances lay behind their actions?  This is in fact one of the most famous episodes in Roman history, not least for the fact that it was one of only two serious revolts by the slave population in all of Rome's history.

Leslie Shumka, 'Roman Slavery,' Chap. 4 (pp. 72-93) in Themes in Roman Society and Culture. An Introduction to Ancient Rome, Gibbs, Nikolic, and Ripat, edd. (Oxford 2014).  This chapter is the first part of THIS PDF (CLICK HERE) you got last week.

Starting Wednesday I'll focus on the following reading (and we'll see if we can get through all of it, though it represents in total only 70 pages of relatively short passages).  Please make sure you read my blurb about this book after I tell you what you're reading in it:

Thomas Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery (Routledge 1980), Chaps. 7-10.  This book is available to read online (or to download pdfs of individual chapters) through the library.  Click HERE Links to an external site.. to go to that link (assuming this takes you to the correct page, you'll want to follow the link to Ebook Central Academic Complete...if the link doesn't work for you, just search for the book in the UW Library Catalogue).  However, I have thoughtfully downloaded the pdfs for you as follows:

About this book: Wiedemann's Greek and Roman Slavery is a sourcebook -- a collection of ancient texts -- that documents slavery in the Greek and Roman world.  It is not, therefore, a continuous narrative, but rather a sampling of the primary evidence.  These four chapters cover the fundamental aspects of Roman slavery I want us to be familiar with.  You may, however, find other sections of the book equally interesting, so I encourage you to browse through the whole book online (see above) just to see what it offers (we'll be reading one other chapter at a later date).  Some of the passages in the chapters assigned are about Greek slavery, and you may skip those (it will be obvious which are which).  

  • To think about: 

With respect to the Epictetus: you will see that this text is the subject of this week's paper, and even if you opt not to write this one, please have a look at the assignment and give it some thought. 

Spartacus: see above for what you should be on the lookout for.

Slavery in general: One thing to realize about Roman slavery is that it is a multi-faceted, complex institution -- there were many, many different kinds of and levels of enslavement. And while it was a very different institution from slavery as practiced in this country (the US), there are still common elements.  As you read through the sourcebook, try to think of ways in which Roman slavery differs from what you know about slavery in the US, and ways in which what you read surprises you (or confirms what you already suspected).

  • Optonal listening

If you're interested in learning more about slavery in the Roman world, you might want to listen to a good discussion (about 45 minutes) of the subject by a group of leading scholars and broadcast on BBC 4 (there's also a good bibliography on the subject).  CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK.

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