4 - Slave labour

Summary

In the Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus in AD 79, Herodes son of Apion sent word to local officials that two slaves named Amarontos and Diogenes, one a slave in the Service of his brother, the other in that of his wife, had died. The papyrus document that records the news (P.Oxy. 3510) gives little information about the slaves. But because Herodes described them as slaves ‘without a trade’ it makes clear that while alive they had not been trained to perform specific Jobs – say those of weavers or fullers or stenographers. An orator of the second Century AD observed that in a poor household the same slaves did the cooking, kept the house and made the beds, and even a weaver who had been rented out might have to return at night to bake bread for her master. So perhaps Amarontos and Diogenes had been slaves, like Apuleius’ Photis, who did anything and everything required of them – in Photis’ case portering, stabling horses, carrying messages, preparing food, attending guests, waiting at table and putting her mistress to bed; Photis even knew something of her master's money-lending business. In wealthy, upper-class households, by contrast, it was conventional for slaves to be assigned very precise duties, a point that Tacitus emphasised (Ger. 25.1) when comparing Roman and German slaveowning practices.