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PUBLIC SLAVES IN ROME: ‘PRIVILEGED’ OR NOT?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2020

Franco Luciani
Franco Luciani*
Affiliation:
Newcastle University
*
franco.luciani@ncl.ac.uk
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Extract

In the Roman world, slavery played a crucial role. Besides private slaves, owned by individual masters, and—from the beginning of the Principate—imperial slaves, who were the property of the emperors, there were also the so-called public slaves: non-free individuals who were owned by a community, such as the Roman people as a whole in Rome (serui publici populi Romani), or the citizen body of a colony or a municipium in Italy or in the provinces (serui ciuitatum). Public slaves in Rome were employed for numerous public services and acted under the authority of the Senate as assistants to public magistrates, officers or priests. Similarly, in Italian and in provincial cities, they juridically depended on the decisions of local councils and performed various activities within the civic administration, beholden to the magistrates.

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , May 2020 , pp. 368 - 384
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2020

INTRODUCTION

In the Roman world, slavery played a crucial role. Besides private slaves, owned by individual masters, and—from the beginning of the Principate—imperial slaves, who were the property of the emperors, there were also the so-called public slaves: non-free individuals who were owned by a community, such as the Roman people as a whole in Rome (serui publici populi Romani), or the citizen body of a colony or a municipium in Italy or in the provinces (serui ciuitatum). Public slaves in Rome were employed for numerous public services and acted under the authority of the Senate as assistants to public magistrates, officers or priests. Similarly, in Italian and in provincial cities, they juridically depended on the decisions of local councils and performed various activities within the civic administration, beholden to the magistrates.Footnote 1

In historical and legal texts, the most frequent references are to a seruus publicus or to a seruus ciuitatis, whereas in Latin inscriptions we generally find a single personal name for the slave, which was the only name that slaves typically possessed, followed by the expression seruus publicus or by the ethnonym of the community—in the genitive case—to which they belonged. In some of these inscriptional instances, mostly from the city of Rome, public slaves are referred to with a second name (agnomen), derived from the nomen or the cognomen of their former masters.

Modern scholarship has tended to distinguish serui publici from the general slave population, whether in Rome or in the municipalities, and regardless of chronology. This was due not only to their legal status (that is, as property of a collective entity) but also to the common opinion that they enjoyed an exceptionally high status and social mobility, which would have set them apart from other slaves.

This paper aims to reassess this specific matter by relativizing the above-mentioned assumption. The focus of the investigation is indeed the social position of public slaves in the city of Rome, particularly in the Imperial period.

The opening section will provide a review of the scholarly views on the social status of public slaves in the Roman world. This study will then discuss the various indicators of privileged status for public slaves, which have been adduced by modern scholarship, with particular focus on the city of Rome. The third part will examine epigraphic evidence that can shed light on the manumission of serui publici populi Romani. There will follow a discussion of the possible existence of a hierarchy among members of the familia publica in Rome. The final section will examine how public slaves were viewed in ancient times, through analysis of a selection of passages from literary and legal texts.

1. PUBLIC SLAVES AS PRIVILEGED: THE COMMON VIEW

It is generally accepted that public slaves in the Roman world enjoyed a higher status within the servile population, benefitting to some extent from a privileged life and good social conditions. This interpretation stems from the fact that various legal measures provided for public slaves to receive certain ‘benefits’ (lodging, board and clothing, a possible remuneration, the right to dispose of half of their peculium testamentarily). In respect of all these formal ‘advantages’, Theodor Mommsen was among the first scholars to admit the existence of ‘theils factische, theils rechtliche Unterschiede’ between public and private slaves.Footnote 2 The same arguments were advanced in 1897 by Léon Halkin.Footnote 3 From then on, this view pervaded subsequent scholarship. In 1908, for example, William W. Buckland outlined that public slaves ‘took a social rank very different from that of ordinary slaves’,Footnote 4 while, two decades later, Reginald H. Barrow stated that ‘the social and legal status of these [that is, public] slaves was superior to that of private slaves’.Footnote 5

This perspective basically prevailed until the second half of the twentieth century and thereafter. For instance, when Gerard Boulvert and Paul Weaver embarked on their studies of imperial slavery, a topic somehow related to seruitus publica, they both shared the view that serui publici were privileged slaves.Footnote 6 In 1977, in an article commenting (at times sternly) on Halkin's book, Nourbert Rouland also ended up confirming the idea that public slaves enjoyed better conditions than private slaves.Footnote 7 A few years later, Walter Eder reaffirmed ‘der privilegierte Stellung’ of the serui publici populi Romani: in addition to the formal ‘benefits’ already noted by previous scholars, he regarded the fact that public slaves in Rome generally partnered with freeborn or manumitted women as proof of a privileged condition; moreover, he supposed (though without evidence) that they were not required to perform operae for the state after their manumission, and interpreted this as a marker of status.Footnote 8 While the lack of evidence makes this assumption simply impossible to prove for public slaves in Rome, the subsequent finding of the Lex Irnitana demonstrated that Eder's hypothesis is most likely wrong for serui ciuitatum.Footnote 9 In the decades that followed, other scholars agreed with the commonly held idea of an overall better social condition of public slaves in comparison with the social condition of private slaves.Footnote 10

In his 2004 book on public slaves in the cities of the Empire, Alexander Weiss devoted a whole chapter to ‘Die Stellung der öffentlichen Sklaven in der römischen Gesellschaft’.Footnote 11 After an accurate analysis of the overall matter, Weiss concluded that the tendency to place municipal and colonial slaves on a high level within the whole slave society is legitimate. Indeed, besides their frequent unions with free or freed women, the possibility of some of these slaves receiving a sort of remuneration (as well as the fact that they performed euergetic acts) led him to infer that they had considerable liquid assets. As a result, Weiss suggested that municipal slaves be ranked immediately below those in the imperial household.

This has remained as the prevailing opinion among scholars working on public slavery. For instance, in 2006, when studying the legal aspects of public slavery, János Zlinszky came to the conclusion that a public slave was entirely different from a private slave because of ‘eine gewisse Selbständigkeit’.Footnote 12 Analogously, in 2007, when referring specifically to the familia publica of Ostia, Françoise Sudi-Guiral assumed that this group of slaves enjoyed ‘une position de supériorité’.Footnote 13 Most recently, in 2011, Leonard Schumacher stated that public slaves were characterized by ‘a, relatively speaking, higher social position’.Footnote 14 Finally, Richard Gamauf counted the ‘[s]erui publici owned by the state or a municipality’ among the ‘privileged […] groups of slaves’, as they ‘had a better legal position’.Footnote 15

Only a few scholars—such as Paul Louis in 1912 or, more recently, José Miguel Serrano Delgado in 1996 and Christer Bruun in 2008—have openly questioned the assumption that public slaves occupied a ‘privileged’ position.Footnote 16 Both Louis and Serrano Delgado argued that the majority of public slaves in Rome and in the municipalities performed menial jobs, which made their fate uncertain and debarred them from any career. Analysing the case study of Ostia, then, Bruun convincingly demonstrated that the former public slaves hardly reached a good social position, expressing an opposing opinion to that previously proposed by Sudi-Guiral.Footnote 17

The greatest merit of these studies (Bruun's in particular) is that of relativizing to a particular context the general assumption that public slaves were ‘privileged’, if compared to privately owned slaves. Indeed, it is possible to argue that in certain cities a few serui ciuitatum actually enjoyed an overall better social condition within the slave population in respect of the potential to gain freedom and improve their social position by becoming seuiri or Augustales. This was especially the case for those (limocincti, tabularii, actores, dispensatores, uilici and arcarii) who had a greater chance of being integrated into the local sub-elites.Footnote 18 Such a situation was most likely to apply to the smallest towns, where the possibility of building strong links with local elites was easier for the public slaves who attended upon magistrates or acted in close association with them, rather than in the largest cities, such as Ostia, where the scope for social mobility was presumably significantly reduced. With regard to this, an examination of the biggest city (that is, Rome) would constitute a particularly significant case study, which has been overlooked so far.Footnote 19

2. WHICH ‘PRIVILEGES’?

Before coming to any conclusion, it is necessary to discuss in greater detail whether the indicators of a privileged status identified by modern scholarship applied to all public slaves, that is, serui ciuitatum in colonies or municipia and serui publici populi Romani in Rome, and if these ‘privileges’ actually made them stand out from the rest of the slave population.

a) Lodging

One of the regulations recorded in the bronze tables from Heraclea in Lucania, dating to the first century b.c., attests that in Italian municipalities some places were normally assigned to public slaves by censors for habitation or use.Footnote 20 The same practice is likely to have remained in force even beyond this time, in all cities in Italy and abroad.

A passage from Tacitus suggests that accommodation for public slaves was also provided in Rome, at least for those who were in charge as custodians of the temples (aeditui). In a.d. 68, escaping from the praetorians hired by Otho to kill him, Piso fled into the temple of Vesta in the Forum, where a public slave (publicus seruus) helped him to hide in his chamber (contubernium eius).Footnote 21 Although no other evidence is currently available, it is likely that all public slaves employed in Rome had some accommodation at their disposal.Footnote 22

However, none of these examples constitutes a real ‘benefit’; indeed, it is well known that lodging could also be granted to private slaves by their masters.Footnote 23 The sole difference concerned the type of accommodation: private slaves typically lived with their masters under the same roof, whilst serui publici likely had lodgings at their disposal in public spaces of the city.Footnote 24 These may have been shared among several slaves, as the term contubernium used by Tacitus seems to suggest.Footnote 25

b) Board and clothing

The so-called Lex Irnitana, the Flavian law on the administration of the municipium of Irni in Baetica, attests that a section of the city budget was devoted to food and clothing for those who were slaves of the municipes, that is, public slaves.Footnote 26

There is no evidence of a similar practice in Rome, but it is more than likely that food and clothes for the serui publici populi Romani were also provided at the expense of the state. Indeed, in the Roman world, providing board and clothing for a slave commonly fell within the duties of a dominus, as made clear by Seneca (who clearly warned against calling this a ‘benefit’).Footnote 27 It is possible to assume that the Senate in Rome was required to make sure that board and garments were duly supplied to the serui publici populi Romani, exactly as the local council (ordo decurionum) in the cities had to do for the serui ciuitatum.Footnote 28

Hence, it seems that two more alleged ‘privileges’, that is, board and clothing, were actually basic needs provided for most slaves and not exclusively for public ones. The only difference is possibly that, besides receiving their daily board, some public slaves in Rome could also draw a salary from the public treasury. Frontinus attests that in 11 b.c. a senatus consultum decreed that a yearly food allowance (cibaria annua) in the form of money (pecunia) had to be granted to the three serui publici who assisted the public water commissioners (curatores aquarum publicarum).Footnote 29 In another passage, Frontinus informs us that the team of 240 public slaves employed for the maintenance of the conduits (familia publica aquaria) also received a kind of remuneration (commoda) paid from the state treasury (aerarium);Footnote 30 this term may include a payment in cash, which could correspond to basic subsistence expenses.Footnote 31 At any rate, there is no explicit evidence that all public slaves were salaried, as suggested by Eder.Footnote 32

The fact that at least some public slaves could receive a remuneration led them to put aside and manage a monetary allowance or property (peculium). The peculium of a public slave is also mentioned by Papinian.Footnote 33 This is certainly not an exclusive ‘benefit’ for public slaves; indeed, it is well known that private masters could also offer their slaves a peculium.Footnote 34 The only real difference is that serui publici populi Romani had the right to bequeath half their peculium.

c) Bequeathing

A fragment of Ulpian explicitly states that a public slave of the Roman people had the right to dispose of half of their peculium testamentarily.Footnote 35 Traces of how this right was exercised are scarce. Indeed, only one inscription from Rome mentions the heir of a public slave. This consists of a marble stele set up by Bithus Paullianus for Aemilia Prima, who is mentioned as being his concubine and heir.Footnote 36 Of the other 142 epigraphic sources mentioning public slaves from Rome, only one case records the abbreviation H.M.H.E.N.S. (standing for hoc monumentum heredes exteros non sequetur), meaning ‘This monument does not follow heirs external to the family.’Footnote 37 Conversely, there is no evidence for the formula T.F.I. (or anything similar), which stands for testamento fieri iussit, that is, ‘[The deceased] ordered [a funerary monument] to be made in his will.’

Slaves uicarii could also be included in the peculium of a slave.Footnote 38 However, whereas several inscriptions attest that municipal or colonial slaves possessed uicarii in the cities of the Empire,Footnote 39 no epigraphic evidence of public slaves’ uicarii is recorded in Rome. This suggests that public slaves in Rome used their peculium mostly to buy inscribed funerary monuments for themselves and/or their family.Footnote 40 Moreover, since the vast majority of these epitaphs appeared on simple plaques, it is possible to infer that the amount of money at their disposal was not considerably high.

While the possibility for public slaves in Rome of disposing of half of their peculium testamentarily may indeed be recognized as a ‘privilege’, the available inscriptional evidence does not provide us with much information about the management of such property and its impact in the life of public slaves. At the same time, however, these epigraphic sources offer a glimpse into the family relationships of serui publici.

d) Family relationships

A significant number of inscriptions (50 out of 142) attest to unions between public slaves and women who are either ingenuae or libertae or of unclear status.Footnote 41 As stated in the first section of this article, Eder has interpreted this as proof of a privileged status.Footnote 42 However, unions between slaves and free (or freed) partners were fairly common and depended on the approval of their masters.Footnote 43 When analysing the partners of Roman public slaves from an onomastic standpoint, it is immediately clear that only one ingenua is attested.Footnote 44 All the other partners are either libertae or women of unclear status (most of whom were probably freedwomen themselves, as their Greek names would suggest). Then there is only one example of a union between a public slave and a female member of the familia Caesaris: Philippus Rustianus, a public slave assistant to the keeper of the shrine of the Deified Augustus in the Neronian Age, set up a tombstone for his partner (called coniunx) Claudia Lachne, who was a freedwoman of Claudius’ daughter Antonia.Footnote 45

All this evidence seems to indicate that public slaves in Rome cohabited with ingenuae much more rarely than with libertae. The latter did not generally belong to the familia Caesaris, that is, the real elite among the slave-class and freedman-class of imperial society.Footnote 46 Moreover, these unions clearly had the status of contubernia, as it happened with all other slaves.Footnote 47 In the Roman world, any children born from a contubernium would be freeborn but illegitimate: according to the ius gentium, they indeed followed their mother's condition, also obtaining her nomen.Footnote 48 Six out of the fifty-five inscriptions mentioning unions between public slaves and free women clearly demonstrate that all children born in such ‘mixed marriages’ bear their mother's nomen and are thus to be considered as illegitimate freeborn children.Footnote 49 This undoubtedly demonstrates that public slaves in Rome did not have the right to a legal marriage. This fact, however, did not prevent public slaves and their partners from defining themselves as coniuges in the inscriptions.Footnote 50

In a.d. 52, Claudius persuaded the Senate to issue a senatus consultum, whereby a female Roman citizen (ingenua or liberta) entering into a relationship with a slave without the knowledge and consent of his master would have become enslaved to her partner's owner. Conversely, she could remain free with the consent of the slave's master, but any child born from her union with the slave would become a slave of the father's master, against the principle of the ius gentium, which was later restored by Hadrian.Footnote 51 There is no explicit evidence that allows us to infer that this measure also affected public slaves in Rome. There are only three cases in which children of serui publici and women of uncertain status are recorded as slaves (though not as public slaves).Footnote 52 In contrast, an inscription from Augusta Emerita seems to demonstrate that the senatus consultum Claudianum might have affected public slaves in that colony and possibly in other cities of the Empire too.Footnote 53 Despite this measure, however, the practice of ‘mixed marriages’ continued to be common among municipal and colonial slaves, although a large number of inscriptions attest that unions between male and female public slaves were frequent too; as a result, the children born from such unions became public slaves themselves, implying that ‘slave breeding’ was one of the largest supply sources of public slaves in the cities of the Empire.Footnote 54

In Rome, there is no evidence for female public slaves. Therefore, the most common way to provide Rome with serui publici was not by ‘slave breeding’ but by purchasing them (or receiving them as a donation) from the estates of private families. The second name (agnomen) that most public slaves from Rome had along with their simplex nomen derived precisely from the nomen or the cognomen of their former master.Footnote 55 Mommsen linked the fact that public slaves in Rome bore two names with the high social status that they would have enjoyed among the slave population, going so far as to interpret this practice as the expression of a hybrid position between real freedom and real enslavement.Footnote 56 However, not all the serui publici in Rome had an agnomen.Footnote 57 Unless one argues that public slaves without a second name were of lower status (which would seem difficult), this means that the agnomen actually had legal rather than social significance, just indicating the slave's previous private master before the slave entered into public property.Footnote 58

If one thus considers all the supposed ‘privileges’ that have been analysed so far, it appears that many other slaves in Rome might potentially have lived in conditions not dissimilar to those of the serui publici populi Romani. The most noticeable difference is that many aspects of the life of public slaves were regulated by law. This certainly had a legal significance: considering that public slaves in Rome were the property of the populus Romanus as a whole and not subject to the potestas of a single dominus, it is not surprising that their overall conditions of life should be legally—and publicly—formalized: this was in the interests of the populus and the res publica.

It is, therefore, necessary to investigate whether other factors might have determined a better social position of serui publici within the slave population, that is, their chances to obtain manumission or at least their opportunities for promotion.

3. MANUMISSION: A REALISTIC HOPE?

The Lex Irnitana constitutes the main source of information about the manumission of serui ciuitatum. Chapter 72, entitled De seruis publicis manumittendis, established that a duumuir who wished to set a public slave free had to submit his proposal to the majority of the local councillors (decuriones); should they agree to the request and fix the amount of money that had to be received from the public slave, the duumuir could set him (or her) free.Footnote 59 The same or similar rules were probably followed in other cities of the Empire as well.Footnote 60

In the case of public slaves in Rome, there is no direct evidence for the procedure of manumitting them, but it is possible to surmise that it was analogous, involving a magistrate's decision, previously authorized by the Senate. Indeed, when Varro makes reference to the manumission of public slaves both in Rome and in the municipalities, with specific attention to their onomastics, he also mentions the role played by Roman public magistrates.Footnote 61 According to his account, most freedmen who had been set free in a municipium got their names from that town: Faventinus derived from Faventia and Reatinus from Reate; analogously, the freedmen of the Romans (Romanorum liberti) ought to have been given the name Romanus. However, in Rome this onomastic rule must have changed over time. Indeed, Varro himself says that at some point before his time Roman public freedmen began to take the name of the magistrates who set them free—presumably the same magistrates who had proposed their manumission.

A trace of the first—and most ancient?—onomastic habit mentioned by Varro may be found in an episode described by Livy for the year 405–404 b.c.,Footnote 62 even though Livy's reliability regarding this archaic period must always be carefully assessed, as he could have anticipated a later practice. At any rate, Livy tells that, during a battle against the Volsci, the Roman army was encountering difficulties in capturing the besieged citadel of Artena; it was only thanks to a slave, who let some soldiers in through a steep passage, that the Romans could enter the fortress and destroy it. The traitor slave was given as a reward, besides freedom, the properties of two families, and was named Servius Romanus.

An example of the second onomastic rule may be found in Appian, notably when he mentions over 10,000 slaves of the proscribed, upon whom Sulla bestowed freedom, Roman citizenship and the nomen of Cornelius after himself. According to Appian, by acting this way Sulla sought to ensure for himself a huge number of individuals who would always have been ready to obey his commands.Footnote 63 Being confiscated by the state, the patrimony of these proscribed men, including their slaves, was transferred into public property. These serui, having become publici, were manumitted by Sulla in his capacity as dictator, probably as a reward for their collaboration during the violence of the proscriptions.Footnote 64

A third onomastic practice, not mentioned by Varro and probably in use by the first century b.c., must also be acknowledged. Two sources, Cicero and Pomponius (recorded in the Digest),Footnote 65 provide information about a certain Menander, a former Greek slave sent to Greece as an official interpreter during a diplomatic mission, either before the Hannibalic WarFootnote 66 or after the battle of Pydna of 168 b.c. or possibly even after the destruction of Corinth in 146 b.c.Footnote 67 Cicero mentions his complete name in full, Gnaeus Publicius Menander, whilst Pomponius simply records him as Menander, but specifies that he had been manumitted among the Romans (apud nos manumissus erat). He was probably a prisoner of war who initially became a public slave, then a public freedman. Consequently, it is possible to argue that public freedmen of the Romans could also receive the nomen Publicius, as happened to several liberti ciuitatum.Footnote 68

Only one epigraphic document out of the 142 inscriptions mentioning public slaves from Rome refers to a manumitted public slave: it is the case of Tiberius Claudius Melipthongus Obultronianus, a former public slave probably employed in a lawcourt (publicus a subsellis tribunorum), who apparently took his praenomen and his nomen from the magistrate who set him free.Footnote 69 Most likely, the emancipator is to be identified with an emperor (Claudius or Nero) in his capacity as magistrate.

Within the large number of inscriptions from Rome recording Tiberii Claudii or Publicii whose status is not explicitly stated, not one plausible public freedman can be found.Footnote 70 Rather, they are to be identified as imperial freedmen or former slaves of the gens Publicia. Some former public slaves could also be among them, although it would be strange, at the very least, for a former seruus publicus to conceal his previous condition or his current status of public freedman, especially if one assumes that serui publici were privileged. It is even more difficult to trace potential public freedmen if they took the name of a senatorial magistrate and if their status of former public slaves is not explicitly mentioned in their epitaphs or in the epitaphs of their partners and/or children. In all these cases, however, the issue related to the reason for their possible ‘camouflage’ should be addressed. Conversely, the great number of inscriptions mentioning public slaves who died in a condition of servitude, together with the almost complete absence of any certain public freedmen, seems to prove that, in Rome, manumitting public slaves was an extremely rare practice, at least during the Imperial Age.Footnote 71

In contrast, in other cities of the Empire, the manumission of serui publici was arguably more common. According to Weiss's catalogue, more than 360 inscriptions from all over the Empire record a total of about 300 public slaves and 90 public freedmen.Footnote 72

The surviving inscriptional evidence does not necessarily represent an accurate reflection of the overall composition of the population of public slaves, especially if one considers the impact of the epigraphic ‘habit’ throughout the Empire. However, the difference between the number of attestations of public freedmen in Rome and in other cities of the Roman world is undoubtedly remarkable. It seems, therefore, possible that public slaves in Rome had no easy opportunities to gain freedom during the Empire, unlike what might have happened during the Republican period. The evidence actually shows that from the first to the third century a.d. serui publici in Rome were individuals who were mostly born into slavery (or had been enslaved), then transferred from private to public property, and eventually died as public slaves.Footnote 73 Therefore, they did not use their peculium to pay for their own freedom, as was often the case with private slaves or with serui ciuitatum, who also enjoyed the benefit of maintaining half of their peculium on manumission.Footnote 74

In this context of manumission, it is certainly important to deal with the issue of the operae, the services that Roman freedmen were generally obliged to perform for their former masters after the manumission.Footnote 75 Indeed, as already mentioned, Eder supposed that public slaves were not required to perform such operae for the state after their manumission and interpreted this as a marker of status. Instead, public slaves in the cities were likely subject to this obligation towards their municipalities: chapter 72 of the Lex Irnitana makes indeed clear reference to operae, which municipal slaves were required to offer to the municipium of Irni.Footnote 76 There are various attestations of colonial and municipal freedmen who were employed in the same activities on behalf of their cities as those they performed as slaves, and this circumstance seems to support the assumption that public slaves in the cities were subject to operae, like all other slaves.Footnote 77

As for Rome, there is no similar evidence to infer whether former serui publici were obliged or not to perform any service for the state. This is why both Rouland and Eder suggested the possibility that public slaves had the privilege of exemption from operae.Footnote 78 There are only very few sources which may allow us to challenge this view. One clue can be offered by the employment of the above-mentioned public freedman, Gnaeus Publicius Menander, who was employed as an official interpreter during a diplomatic mission for the Roman state.Footnote 79 This might have been a service imposed by the Roman government on a former public slave, but it cannot be established with certainty. The case of the other cited public freedman, Tiberius Claudius Melipthongus Obultronianus, seems more significant. The fact that he is mentioned on his tombstone by his title of publicus a subsellis tribunorum may suggest that he also remained in this post after his manumission.Footnote 80 After all, it would not be unimaginable that public freedmen in Rome could be obliged to offer service to the state, in the rare cases of their manumission. Indeed, as Henrik Mouritsen convincingly stressed, ‘formalised services [that is, operae] may have been more important in cases of “impersonal” patrons’.Footnote 81 Anyhow, our sources are too scarce to ascertain whether or not public freedmen were required to perform operae for the state; it is not, therefore, possible to come to an unquestionable conclusion in this regard. However, the assumption that public freedmen in Rome were exempted from the obligation of operae is also groundless and this possible privilege is to be ruled out until proven otherwise.

4. AN INTERNAL HIERARCHY

Since public slaves in Rome apparently had no realistic prospect of manumission, it is necessary to examine whether there could have been any difference within their class, in order to understand whether they were given any chance of social advancement.

A passage from the proceedings of the Arval Brethren attests that in a.d. 155 a public slave in attendance on this priesthood was ‘promoted’ to a more important office, that is, copying documents for the quaestors (promotus ad tabulas quaestorias transscribendas).Footnote 82 This source seems to demonstrate that being in the service of the quaestores was regarded as a higher position than attending on the Fratres Aruales; we can thus infer that public slaves assisting magistrates were presumably held in higher regard than those attending on priests.

The different economic treatment reserved for the above-mentioned three serui publici in attendance on the curatores aquarum publicarum (who received cibaria annua) and for the team of 240 public slaves employed for the maintenance of the conduits (who were instead entitled to receive commoda) seems to confirm the existence of a comparable hierarchy.Footnote 83 It is likely that the 240 members of the familia publica aquaria performed more menial jobs than the three serui publici who were part of the retinue of the curatores, and that, for this reason, their remuneration was comparatively lower.

Such a distinction is also attested by the formal attire that some serui publici were wearing. According to two passages from Isidore of Seville, public slaves used to wear a particular garment called a limus: a kind of belt of varying width, which presented several crosswise purple stripes.Footnote 84 These two excerpts from Isidore's work led both Mommsen and Eder to consider the limus as the distinctive garment of all public slaves and, therefore, to regard it as a marker of status in its own right. However, a sentence of Marcus Tullius Tiro, freedman of Cicero, recorded by Aulus Gellius, suggests that a garment called limum (neuter form of the commonly attested masculine term limus) was worn only by the attendants of the magistrates.Footnote 85 Although any more precise allusion to these limum-bearers is lacking, it is most likely that Tiro was referring to those public slaves who served and accompanied magistrates.Footnote 86 After all, in Italian and in provincial cities too only the small group of public slaves who attended on the highest magistrates wore this particular garment (limocinti or publici cum cincto limo), which was actually a marker of distinction.Footnote 87 Public slaves who assisted the highest magistrates (limocincti), together with archivists (tabularii), agents (actores), financial administrators and managers (dispensatores and uilici), and treasurers (arcarii), were also the only ones who performed acts of euergetism in the cities, which were sometimes even quite significant.Footnote 88 Consequently, an internal hierarchy among serui ciuitatum clearly existed; public slaves belonging to the above-mentioned categories reached a more prominent position within the familia publica in the cities.Footnote 89

Analogously, from what we can glimpse from literary and epigraphic sources, we may assume that a sort of hierarchy might also have existed within the body of the serui publici populi Romani. Public slaves attending upon magistrates or curators certainly stood out from the group of serui publici, as they received a higher remuneration and wore the limus; we can say that they were at the top levels of the familia publica. Public slaves assisting priests—who probably did not wear the limus—were immediately below them. The rest of the serui publici, that is, those employed in more menial tasks, who were most likely to be the largest group, lay at the lowest rank of the familia publica.

Ultimately then, since the limus was worn only by public slaves who were at the top of the hierarchy within public slavery, this garment cannot be regarded per se as a distinctive feature of all public slaves. Moreover, just as the fasces carried by the lictors, rather than the lictors themselves, were a symbol of the power of the magistrates, the limus was a representation of the authority of the public officials rather than a marker of distinction for those public slaves who were wearing it.

5. THE REPUTATION OF PUBLIC SLAVES IN LITERARY AND LEGAL SOURCES

Having found evidence for an internal hierarchy within the familia publica in Rome, it is worth examining some literary and legal sources in order to find possible information about ancient attitudes towards public slaves.

First, serui publici have received much less attention in Latin literature than their imperial counterparts.Footnote 90 Moreover, there is no reference at all to any positive, remarkable or even exceptional deed performed by a public slave or freedman, as in the case, for instance, of the father of Claudius Etruscus, the imperial freedman praised by Statius for his extraordinary rise and fall.Footnote 91

Nevertheless, among the few authors who mention serui publici, some passages are quite significant, because they give an idea of how this slave class was perceived in ancient times. Two passages from Livy and Valerius Maximus may be of interest in this respect. Both authors record the same episode in which, in 312 b.c., the Censor Appius Claudius Caecus transferred to the state the cult of Hercules at the so-called Ara Maxima, an altar in the Forum Boarium.Footnote 92 Such a cult had previously been maintained by two noble families, the gens Potitia and the gens Pinaria; thereafter, it was administered by public slaves (or, in fact, by a praetor with public slaves in attendance). Traditionally, it is believed that such intervention caused the blindness of Appius himself, as well as the extinction of the Potitii. Livy (9.34.17–19) records the indignation displayed by the tribune Publius Sempronius in the Senate in 310 b.c. at the transfer of the Hercules cult service from the supervision of very noble priests to the service of (public) slaves (ab nobilissimis antistitibus … ad seruorum ministerium). Valerius Maximus (1.1.17) used a similar expression (humile seruorum publicorum ministerium), placing emphasis on the fact that the cult of Hercules was transferred into the lowly hands of public slaves. In the first case, the political stance underlying the words of the tribune Sempronius, who tried to compel Appius Claudius to lay his censorship down, is evident; in the second case, the attempt to glorify the nobility of the ancient families in opposition to the slaves (and against the ‘nationalization’ of the cult) is equally clear. However, these two disparaging remarks might also be considered as a trace of the possible ‘general’ low opinion of public slaves, especially those who attended on priests.

Other literary sources mention public slaves who performed humble and violent (albeit legal) deeds, which they were probably coerced to accomplish, arguably even by using force. In 88 b.c., when the Senate declared Marius (together with Sulpicius and ten more individuals) a public enemy, the executioner who was sent to Minturnae to kill him seems to have been a public slave, although he did not commit the deed.Footnote 93 In the Late Republican period, Varro, according to Aulus Gellius, complained about the impossibility of arresting aediles who were called into court by a private citizen, for these magistrates were surrounded by public slaves who could even be used to disperse the people.Footnote 94 In 44 b.c., Cicero described as ‘shameful’ the flogging of Lucius Varius Cotyla, carried out by the public slaves attending on Antony in his capacity as consul.Footnote 95 Cicero purposely mentions this episode in order to denigrate Antony; however, the event itself shows the extent to which public slaves could be compelled to fulfil even the most deplorable orders.

Finally, a passage from the Lex Aelia Sentia dated to a.d. 4 might also be of some interest for the purpose of this overview. Among its regulations, this law established that private slaves who had been punished or condemned for ignominious crimes and subsequently manumitted would become free men but of the same status as foreigners who had capitulated (peregrini dediticii). Such individuals would never become Roman citizens and they could not inherit or make a will; in the text of the law, it is said that this was the lowest sort of freedom (pessima […] libertas).Footnote 96 Furthermore, they were not allowed to remain in Rome or even within one hundred miles of the city. Those who contravened these rules were made slaves again, without any future possibility of being manumitted, and were forbidden to stay in Rome or within one hundred miles of it. If they were unlawfully set free, they would become slaves of the Roman people (serui populi Romani).Footnote 97 This last penalty was intended to punish a master by depriving him of his slaves, rather than to penalize the slaves themselves; however, it is remarkable that the event of becoming a public slave was intended as the last step to degrade people who had previously experienced both slavery (twice) and pessima libertas.

6. CONCLUSION: ‘PRIVILEGED’ TO WHAT EXTENT?

As has been discussed in Section 2 above, it may be concluded that most of the ‘privileges’ considered by modern scholars as a prerogative of public slaves were actually not exclusive to them. Indeed, slaves of any status could be provided with board, lodging and clothing. Perhaps some public slaves received also a sort of remuneration in exchange for their services. Arguably, though, this did not happen across the board. Furthermore, it was not unusual for private masters to also offer a wage or peculium to their slaves.

The possibility of partnering free or freed women, which was commonly given to serui publici populi Romani by Roman authorities, cannot be counted as a marker of status either. Indeed, it was also possible for private slaves to cohabit with non-slave women, with the consent of their masters. Since unions between public slaves and non-slave women were not legal marriages, their children were illegitimate. Moreover, available sources show that the partners of public slaves did not generally belong to the familia Caesaris.

The sole real ‘privilege’ granted to serui publici populi Romani (and not to other slaves) was the right to dispose of half of their peculium testamentarily and to maintain it on manumission. Nevertheless, only few epigraphic attestations of public slaves’ heirs exist in Rome to this day. Furthermore, the generally simple funerary monuments left by serui publici populi Romani (or their partners) suggest that their peculium was not a large sum. The absence of uicarii of public slaves in Rome, as opposed to what is attested in other cities of the Empire, seems to further confirm this inference.

Section 3 above dealt with the most remarkable and surprising aspect concerning public slavery in Rome: the very scarce number of epigraphic sources mentioning public freedmen, which seems to suggest that manumission of public slaves in Rome was rare, at least during the Imperial Age. Contrary to what happened to public slaves in the cities, who could relatively often be granted freedom, the very large majority of serui publici in Rome had no real prospect of manumission.

The sources examined in Section 4 above suggest that a kind of differentiation existed within the class of public slaves in Rome with respect to their duties. Attending on magistrates or curators was regarded as a better position than assisting priests, and public slaves who performed this duty had the opportunity to wear the limus. All the other publici enjoyed a humbler condition in life and reputation and were presumably dressed in a much less distinctive way. The limus cannot, therefore, be interpreted as a marker of status for all public slaves; it was an attribute of the highest serui publici in rank alone, that is, those attending on magistrates.

As for public slaves in general, the literary sources analysed in Section 5 above convey an image of humble individuals, who were sometimes coerced to perform menial tasks or even violent deeds; these sources might be interpreted as conveying traces of the low esteem in which public slaves were generally held in ancient times.

As for Rome, the impression is that the difference between serui publici and other slaves was more apparent in law than in practice. Any basic needs (lodging, board and clothing) as well as any possible real ‘privilege’ (the opportunity to get a remuneration and the right to dispose of half of their peculium testamentarily) had to be legally and officially formalized. This was precisely due to the fact that public slaves were owned by a community, not by a private individual. With regard to this, they certainly occupied a position legally different from the position of other slaves: being less exposed to the whim of a single master, one might suppose that they enjoyed relative independence, which might have made their lives safer and more stable than the lives of other slaves. If one considers, however, how public slaves in Rome could aspire to social advancement and manumission, a different picture can be drawn. Contrary to what one can deduce for public slaves in colonies and in municipia, serui publici populi Romani in Rome could at best aspire to a promotion to a ‘higher’ office. The available evidence also shows that public slaves did not have exceptional assets or uicarii at their disposal. Moreover, despite their close collaboration with the highest public magistrates and priests, and despite the possibility of managing a peculium, even by a will, they could surely neither hope nor pay for their manumission, as many other slaves certainly did. The extraordinary right granted to public slaves to dispose of half of their peculium testamentarily might have been a sort of compensation for their difficulty in gaining freedom. These limited opportunities for socio-economic advancement and manumission prevent us from assimilating serui publici populi Romani into the category of the most favoured slaves in Rome, notably the imperial slaves. Indeed, serui Caesaris had the real chance to take up a sort of career (cursus) in imperial administration posts, to gain great wealth and political influence, and finally to expect manumission.Footnote 98 This certainly reflects a change of the power mechanism after the institution of the Principate. During the Republican Age, some public slaves might have got close to the political power and, if they succeeded in building a strong link with a magistrate, they might have hoped for freedom. In contrast, in the Imperial Age, when serui Caesaris gained the predominant position within the servile population, especially in Rome, serui publici populi Romani just remained as a symbolic part of the apparatus of the Republican government.

In certain Italian and provincial cities, some public slaves might indeed have enjoyed an overall better social condition within the slave population than serui publici populi Romani did in Rome. The possibility of them gaining freedom and improving their social position was certainly greater, especially if one considers the attendants of magistrates, or the archivists, agents and treasurers, who had more chances to integrate into the local elites. As the epigraphic evidence collected and discussed by Weiss demonstrates, together with the case study of Ostia examined by Bruun, the possibility of upward social mobility was presumably much easier in a small town than in a large city.Footnote 99

To conclude, even if one admits the use of the uncomfortable—and even insensitive—notion of ‘privileged’ slaves to describe a particular case of the unfree condition, the common tendency to place public slaves on a higher level within the overall slave population and regard them as an elite among the slave classes of imperial society, without any proper contextualization and relativization, is far less acceptable. It is indeed necessary to consider which public slaves (according to their specific role) might have stood out from the rest of the overall unfree group, where this occurred (in Rome or in other cities, whether in large or in small ones) and when (during the Republic or under the Empire). Moreover, one should set public slaves apart not because of the ‘benefits’ they may or may not have received but rather for their condition of being the slaves of a collective entity, that is, of an ‘impersonal’ master; accordingly, it would be more appropriate to define the whole of serui publici as a ‘distinctive’ group of slaves rather than as a ‘privileged’ one.

Footnotes

This paper is part of the ‘Serui Publici: Everybody's Slaves (SPES)’ project, which was based at Newcastle University, and received funding under a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020–MSCA–IF–2015) under grant agreement no. 704716. I am very grateful to A. Russell, F. Santangelo, A. Wallace-Hadrill and G. Woolf for their useful comments on previous oral or written versions of this paper. Remarks and criticism from the anonymous reviewer and from B. Gibson proved invaluable.

References

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21 Tac. Hist. 1.43. Cf. also Tac. Hist. 3.74 and Suet. Dom. 1: again, in a.d. 68, during the war between Flavius Sabinus and Vitellius, the future emperor Domitian was hidden in the contubernium of the aedituus of the Capitol; the social status of this attendant is not specified by the two authors, but it is possible to infer that he was a public slave. On this, see also Halkin (n. 1), 68–9.

22 Archaeological traces of rooms found under the Forum of Nerva, in a public building dating to the Late Republican Age, have been recently interpreted as chambers for public slaves even though no firm evidence survives: see Rinaldi, A., ‘Preesistenze tardo repubblicane di carattere abitativo sotto la pavimentazione del foro di Nerva (con appendice di G. Maglie)’, Scienze dell'Antichità 21 (2015), 3–32, at 23Google Scholar.

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28 See also Halkin (n. 1), 15–16, 108, 140–1; Luciani, F., ‘Cittadini come domini, cittadini come patroni. Rapporti tra serui publici e città prima e dopo la manomissione’, in Dondin-Payre, M. and Tran, N. (edd.), Esclaves et maîtres dans le monde romain. Expressions épigraphiques de leurs relations (Rome, 2017), 45–64, at 47Google Scholar.

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41 See also Herrmann-Otto, E., Ex ancilla natus. Untersuchungen zu den ‘hausgeborenen’ Sklaven und Sklavinnen im Westen des römischen Kaiserreiches (Stuttgart, 1994), 201Google Scholar.

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50 The word coniunx is used in 33 out of the 50 inscriptions that mention public slaves with partners in Rome. The term maritus is attested in two cases, with uxor in only one case. Expressions such as concubina or contubernalis, which would have been the more lawful ones, are recorded once each.

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57 At least 36 out of more than 154 public slaves are epigraphically attested with no agnomen.

58 Contra, Weaver (n. 6), 214–15.

59 Gonzalez and Crawford (n. 26), 171 (chapter 72, tablet VIIIB, lines 1–30).

60 Luciani (n. 28), 46.

61 Varro, Ling. 8.82–3.

62 Livy, 4.61.7–10.

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68 Halkin (n. 1), 39, 150–2; Eder (n. 1), 116–17.

69 CIL 6.2340 = ILS 1973, cf. CIL 6, page 3828. Cf. SupplIt. Imagines 2 (Rome, 2003), 474–5 no. 3108, 570–1 no. 3353 (a modern copy of the inscription is now preserved at the Antiquarium Comunale del Celio in Rome).

70 Only two cases may be considered: Tiberius Claudius Velox, mentioned by CIL 6.32444 = ILS 4164, could be interpreted as a public freedman, but his onomastics and his function of hymnologus primus M(atris) D(eum) I(daeae) e[t] Atti[d]is publicus are not to be intended as indisputable proofs; an analogous case would be that of Tiberius Claudius Glyptus, hymnologus de campo Caelemontano, attested by CIL 6.9475.

71 Eder's estimate ([n. 1], 120) of 40–60 manumissions of public slaves in Rome per year, based on Cicero's well-known remark that slaves might expect to be manumitted after seven years of enslavement (Cic. Phil. 8.11), refers to the Late Republic only. See also Bradley, K.R., Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire. A Study in Social Control (Oxford, 1987), 85Google Scholar, who argued that there are no grounds for believing Cicero's statement to be generally valid.

72 Cf. Weiss (n. 1), 194–247.

73 So far, there is no evidence of public slaves who were purchased (or repurchased) by private masters and then possibly manumitted.

74 Dig. 40.3.3 (Pap. 14 resp.); cf. also Mouritsen, H., The Freedman in the Roman World (Cambridge, 2011), 201 n. 361CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Chapter 72 of the Lex Irnitana attests to the payment of a sum for the manumission of public slaves: Gonzalez and Crawford (n. 26), 171, 192–3 (chapter 72, tablet VIIIB, lines 12–14). On possible traces of this practice in epigraphic sources, see Luciani (n. 28), 46, 63–4.

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77 Weiss (n. 1), 164–6; Luciani (n. 28), 47–56.

78 See n. 8 above.

79 See n. 65 above.

80 See n. 69 above.

81 Mouritsen (n. 74), 201 n. 361.

82 CIL 6.2086, lines 62–6 (11 December a.d. 155). Cf. Scheid, J., Recherches archéologiques à la Magliana. Commentarii fratrum arualium qui supersunt. Les copies épigraphiques des protocoles annuels de la confrérie arvale (21 av.–304 ap. J.-C.) (Rome, 1998), 238Google Scholar.

83 See notes 29–30 above.

84 Isid. Etym. 15.14.2, 19.33.4.

85 Gell. NA 12.3.3. See also Hyg. Grom. Lim. const. 167.17–19 La. = 132.20–133.1 Th. Cf. TLL 7.2.1427.69–1428.18; Guillaumin, J.-Y., Les arpenteurs romains, I, Hygin le Gromatique, Frontin (Paris, 2005), 171–2Google Scholar.

86 On this and, more generally, on the iconography of Roman public slaves, see Luciani, F., ‘Notes on the external appearance of Roman public slaves’, in Binsfeld, A. and Ghetta, M. (edd.), Ubi servi erant? Die Ikonographie von Sklaven und Freigelassenen in der römischen Kunst (Stuttgart, 2019), 37–51Google Scholar, in which the hypothesis that public slaves had the right to wear the toga is also discussed and eventually rejected.

87 See Weiss, A., ‘Limocincti in Irni. Zur Ergänzung des Duumvirnparagraphen 18 der Lex Irnitana’, ZPE 135 (2001), 284–6, at 284Google Scholar; Weiss (n. 1), 31–3; Luciani (n. 86), 42–3.

88 Weiss (n. 1), 170–2; Luciani (n. 28), 57–63.

89 Serrano Delgado (n. 16), 343; Weiss (n. 1), 179.

90 On imperial slaves and freedmen in literary sources, see Weaver (n. 6), 281–95.

91 Stat. Silu. 3.3. Cf. Weaver, P., ‘The father of Claudius Etruscus: Statius, Siluae 3.3’, CQ 15 (1965), 145–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Newlands, C.E., Statius’ Silvae and the Poetics of Empire (Cambridge, 2004), 220–3Google Scholar.

92 On this episode, see Livy 1.7.14, 9.29.9–11, 9.34.17–19; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.40.5; Val. Max. 1.1.17; Festus, Gloss. Lat. 270; Lactant. Diu. inst. 2.7.15; Serv. 8.179 (cf. also 269); Macrob. Sat. 3.6.13; [Aur. Vict.] Orig. 8.5; [Aur. Vict.] De uir. ill. 34.1–2. Cf. Cassola, F., I gruppi politici romani nel III secolo a.C. (Trieste, 1962), 129Google Scholar; Palmer, R.E.A., ‘The censors of 312 b.c. and the state religion’, Historia 14 (1965), 293–324Google Scholar; Biondo, B., ‘I Potizi, i Pinari e la statizzazione del culto di Ercole’, in Franciosi, G. (ed.), Ricerche sulla organizzazione gentilizia romana, 3 vols. (Naples, 1988), 2.189–210Google Scholar; Humm, M., Appius Claudius Caecus. La République accomplice (Rome, 2005), 642–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rüpke, J., Religion in Republican Rome. Rationalization and Ritual Change (Philadelphia, 2012), 107CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Varro, Ling. 6.54. A praetor urbanus overseeing the cult of Hercules at the Ara Maxima is also mentioned in CIL 6.313 = ILS 3402 = CLE 228 from Rome (third century a.d.), with reference to the Potitii too. On public slaves attending on a praetor, see Val. Max. 7.3.9.

93 Livy, Per. 77 (seruus natione Gallus); Vell. Pat. 2.19 (seruus publicus natione Germanus); Val. Max. 2.10.6 (seruus publicus natione Cimber); Plut. Mar. 39.1–2 (ἱππεὺς δὲ Γαλάτης τὸ γένος ἢ Κίμβρος); App. B Ciu. 1.61 (Γαλάτην ἄνδρα); [Aur. Vict.] De uir. ill. 67.4–5 (percussorem Gallum); Oros. 5.19.7 (percussorem).

94 Gell. NA 13.13.4.

95 Cic. Phil. 8.24, 13.26. Cf. also Traina, G., ‘Notes classico-orientales 4–5’, Electrum 10 (2005), 89–93Google Scholar; Manuwald, G., Cicero, “Philippics” 3–9 (Berlin and Boston, 2007), 996CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 Gai. Inst. 1.13–15, 1.25–6.

97 Gai. Inst. 1.27. Cf. also Buckland (n. 4), 544–6.

98 Weaver (n. 6), 97–104.

99 See the references at notes 17–18 above.