1 - Confronting slavery at Rome

Summary

In the late spring of 53 BC the Roman orator and politician M. Tullius Cicero received a letter from his brother Quintus who was then occupied with Julius Caesar in the conquest of Gaul. The letter (Epistulae ad Familiares 16.6) began as follows:

My dear Marcus, as I hope to see you again and my boy and my Tulliola and your son, I am truly grateful for what you have done about Tiro, in judging his former condition to be below his deserts and preferring us to have him as a friend rather than a slave. Believe me, I jumped for joy when I read your letter and his. Thank you, and congratulations.

The source of Quintus' pleasure was Cicero's decision, taken shortly before, to set free a family slave named Tiro, a cultured man of considerable literary capacity. The pleasure was intense. Quintus spoke in his letter of Tiro, his own son and Cicero's children – all in one breath as it were – without communicating any sense of unease, for the manumission was a joyous affair, almost, it seems, a family event. Also intense was Cicero's personal regard for the slave, as a number of other letters that passed between the two show: just prior to the manumission for instance Cicero had been very concerned about Tiro's ill-health. Tiro was a valued slave whom Cicero thought fit to translate to a condition that better suited his accomplishments and the esteem in which he was held.