Contesting the Slave Family

1. Contesting the Slave Family Sam Fernes Samuel.jones-2@manchester.ac.uk

2. The Slave owners’ perspective

3. Slave owners and slave families: Rhetoric Let the right of even seven children be bestowed upon you, Zoilus, as long as nobody gives you a mother, nobody a father. • Martial Epigrammata 11.12 (handout 1) Hush! Silence! what is all this noise? Have you, who neither have a father nor a mother, such confidence? Away with all that pride. • Cicero De Oratore2.257 (handout 2)

4. Slave owners and slave families: the Law We do not avoid these names, i.e. of cognates, even in slaves: but... The laws do not apply to servile familial relationships • Digest 38.10.10.5 (Paul) (handout 3) This law [of the cognatic right to possess an inheritance] does not apply to servile familyrelationships for itdoes not seemeasy for any servile familial bond (cognatio) to exist. • Digest 38.8.1.2 (Ulpian) (handout 4)

5. Slave family: the Owner’s perspective

6. The mother-to-child connection Somebody of illegitimate birth succeeds to the condition of the mother • Digest 1.5.24 (Ulpian) (handout 5)

7. The husband-to-wife connection ...so they have fellow slaves as wives, from whom they may have children. For from this state of affairs they become more loyal and more attached to the farm. • VarroResRusticae 1.17.5 (handout 6)

8. The father-to-child connection

9. The slaves’ perspective

10. The father-to-child connection (revisited) You would not be obedient if as a slave you paid no heed to your master in order to obey your father. I say this: if perchance you were a slave, and your father and fellow slave ordered something which went against that which your master ordered, and you were to obey your father rather than your master, would I not say you to be disobedient and insubordinate? • Augustine Sermo eiusdem de oboedientia 13.308-312 (handout 7)

11. Slave pietas Sacred to the spirits of the departed, Euhodia home-born slave of Mellinus, 15 years old, here she lies. May the ground rest lightly on you. Euhodus and Callityche to a pientissimadaughter. • AE 1982,485 (handout 8)

12. ‘Family’ corporate resistance I will tell you frankly, father... ...for truly, you deserve to be called by that name since a complaint can be safely entrusted to your keeping. • Phaedrus Appendix 20.3-5 (handout 9)

13. Support in sickness and in old age Generally, because ill slaves are returned so are well slaves if they cannot be separated without great inconvenience or offense on the grounds of piety. For what if they preferred to return the parents having kept the son, or the other way round? This should also be observed in the case of brothers and in persons joined together in contubernium. • Digest 21.1.35 (Ulpian) (handout 10)

14. Expansion of slave families • mammae and tatae • tatula To the shades. To Silvana...Telesphorus. Father Domitius Apollonius, mother DomitiaFortunata , brother Silvanus, tataJulius Telesphorus, mamma Cornelia Spes, tatulaThreptus, they made this to the sweetest, most pious and most innocent soul. • CIL 6.16926 = CIL 6.26594 (handout 11)

15. Security and insecurity: Experiencing the slave family

16. Sex, Sexuality and slave Families

17. Forced Marriage So she at once ordered Rhode to be put on a ship together with Leucon, to be sold as far away from Syria as possible, and planned that Anthia should live with a slave, one of the meanest at that, a goatherd in the country; that way she hoped to get her revenge on her. She sent for the goatherd, Lampon, gave him Anthia, and told him to make her his wife; and if she refused, his instructions were to use force. • Xenophon of EpheseusEphesiaca2.9 (handout 12)

18. Separation of slave spouses A certain slave girl was yoked together with an evil man, a wicked and runaway slave, and she suffered much wrong from the man... But the widow thought it was unholy to separate man and woman, and, even though the girl was useful, decided to sell the two together rather than part them. • John Chrysostom In epistulam I ad Thessalonicenses11.3 (handout 13)

19. Sexual abuse and slave families: Comparative example The only incident I can remembered which occurred while my mother continued on Mr. Newman's farm, was the appearance one day of my father with his head bloody and his back lacerated. He was beside himself with mingled rage and suffering... It seemed the overseer had sent my mother away from the other field hands to a retired place, and after trying persuasion in vain, had resorted to force to accomplish a brutal purpose. Her screams aroused my father at his distant work, and running up, he found his wife struggling with the man. Furious at the sight, he sprung upon him like a tiger. • Josiah Henson (1876: 14) (handout 14)

20. Children of Rape: Comparative Example 2 My mother’s mistress had three boys, one twenty-one, one nineteen, and one seventeen. . . . While she was alone, the boys came in and threw her down on the floor and tied her down so she couldn’t struggle, and one after the other used her as long as they wanted for the whole afternoon . . . that’s the way I came to be here. • Mary Peters in Rawick (ed.) (1972: 328-9) (handout 15)

21. Questions of paternity If she were prepared to stretch and torture her womb with jumping baby boys, you'd perhaps turn out to be the father of an Ethiopian. Soon your will would be monopolised by your discoloured heir – whom you’d never want to see in the morning light. I won’t mention the spurious children and the joys and prayers so often cheated at the filthy latrines, the high priests and Salian priests so often acquired from there to bear the name of Scaurus in their false persons. • Juvenal 6.598-605 (handout 16)