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V. Slaves in Public Service
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
Extract
The use of slaves, persons on the margins of society, in public service by both the Greeks and the Romans is at first sight a puzzle. There is no problem about an oriental monarch using ‘slaves’ to carry out his orders; the Persian kings treated their ministers as members of their household, and referred to them officially as their ‘slaves’. That ordinary Persians should have to take orders from such ‘slaves’ was, in Greek eyes, a disgrace, and an essential feature of despotism. The use of slaves and freedmen by the Roman emperors, and of eunuch slaves - the extreme case of degradation – by the late imperial court, seemed to indicate Rome’s decline from freedom to tyranny: for some modern writers, it was evidence that the Roman empire had turned into a typically oriental despotism. But this analysis only makes the use of slaves by Greek states, including Athens at its most democratic, and by the Roman republic, even more paradoxical.
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References
Notes
1. O. Jacob, Les Exclaves Publics à Athènes (Liege/Paris, 1928; repr. in M. I. Finley’s Ancient Economic History series, New York, 1979). On services provided by slaves in Greek cities in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, cf. A. H. M. Jones, The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian (Oxford, 1940; repr. 1981), part IV.
2. Xen., Poroi 1.13-25 (=#x2019; GARS 87).
3. Phaleas, ap. Arist., Pol. 2.4.13 (= GARS 159).
4. Arist., Pol. 4.12 (= GARS 158).
5. IG 2.1 No. 403 (= GARS 162) and IG 2.1 No. 476 (= GARS 163).
6. GARS 167.
7. N. Rouland, ‘A propos des servi publici populi Romani’, Chiron 7 (1977), 262-78; W. Eder, Servitus Publico (Wiesbaden, 1980).
8. P. R. C. Weaver, Familia Caesaris (Cambridge, 1972). Cf also F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London, 1977), esp. chs. 3 and 5.
9. Notably H. Chantraine, Freigelassene und Sklaven im Dienst der romischen Kaiser. Studien zu ihrer Nomenklatur (Wiesbaden, 1967); ibid., ‘Ausserdienststellung und Altersversorgung kaiserlicher Sklaven und Freigelassener’, Chiron 3 (1973), 307-29.
10. H. Bellen, Die germanische Leibwache der romischen Kaiser des julisch-claudischen Houses (Wiesbaden, 1981).
11. J. Kolendo, ‘Les femmes esclaves de l’empereur’, Actes du colloque 1973 (Paris, 1976), 399-416; S. Treggiari, ‘Jobs in the Household of Livia’, PBSR 43 (1975), 48-77.
12. Tacitus, Ann. 12.53 (=-- GARS 176); Pliny, Ep. 8.6. Cf. e.g. S. I. Oost, ‘The Career of M. Antonius Pallas’, AJPh 79 (1958), 1 Iff.
13. Gibbon, Decline and Fall 1.19 and 32. Such judgments depend on taking a literal view of invectives such as Claudian’s In Eutropium.
14. K. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge, 1978), ch. 3; P. Guyot, Eunuchen als Sklaven und Freigelassene in der griechisch-rbmischen Antike (Stuttgart, 1980).
15. Patterson, op. cit., pp. 315-31.
16. P. Crone, Slaves on Horses (Cambridge, 1980).
17. C. Verlinden, L’Esclavage (ch. II, no. 13 above), 1028ff.
18. Y. Garlan, War in the Ancient World (Engl, transl., London, 1975); K.-W. Welwei, Unfreie im anliken Kriegsdienst. I (Wiesbaden, 1974), II (1977), III (forthcoming); N. Rouland, Les esclaves romaines en temps de guerre (Brussels, 1977).
19. Arginusae: Xen., Hell. 1.6.24; after Chaeronea in 338 B.C.: Hypereides Fg.29 ( = GARS 89); after Cannae, Val. Max. 7.6.1; Livy 22.57.11 (cf. GARS 58).
20. L. Casson, ‘Galley Slaves’, TAPhA 97 (1966), 35^44; on Polybius 10.17 (= GARS 114), J. M. Libourel, ‘Galley Slaves in the Second Punic War’, CPh 68 (1973), 116-19.
21. Augustus, Res Gestae 4.25 (= GARS 61); Suet., Aug. 16; Dio Cassius 48.19 (= GARS 59) and 49.12 (= GARS 60).