1. Florus

The Florus who wrote the text transmitted to us under the title Epitome taken from Titus Livius of all the wars of 700 years is an obscure figure. He may or may not be identical with the Florus who was a poet and friend of Hadrian and/or the Florus who wrote the dialogue Vergil orator or poet (who tells us that he was born in Africa, spent his youth in Rome under Domitian, and subsequently moved to Spain).Footnote ¹ The narrator of the Epitome claims no identity other than Roman.Footnote ² As for his date, he says in the preface that it was ‘not much less than 200 years from Augustus to our age’ (1.praef. 8). Since he could be referring to Augustus’ birth (63 BCE) or death (14 CE) or any important event in between, this is consistent with a date as early as 138 CE or as late as 214 CE.Footnote ³ The current consensus – relying heavily on circumstantial evidence – is that it was written under Hadrian.Footnote ⁴ For my purposes, it is enough to say that this is a work of the mid to late second century.

Florus presents a war-by-war account of all the wars fought by the Roman people from the foundation of the city by Romulus to the reign of Augustus. His history makes bold use of metaphor to convey the unstoppable force of Roman expansion. The conquest of Italy, for example, is compared to a disease that overcomes its victims one by one (1.3.8):

The verb corripere (‘sieze’, ‘infect’), often used of contagion, reinforces the disease metaphor introduced by contagium.Footnote ⁵ Elsewhere, Florus writes that Roman expansion halted briefly at the straits of Messina, like a fire (more ignis), which having ravaged the forests on one side is briefly checked by an intervening river before blazing up again (exarsit, 1.18[2].1–2). The dominant metaphor is one of enslavement, with Florus’ narrative turning again and again to the language of slavery (seruitus, seruire, dominus, dominare, dominatio) in its description of Roman expansion from its beginnings in Latium through to Augustus’ conquests on the Rhine and Danube.Footnote ⁶ Recording what we know as the Fourth Macedonian War, Florus says that Macedon ‘shook off the yoke’ (iugum excutit, 1.30.2) – an animalising metaphor I will return to – and was eventually reconquered by Q. Caecilius Metellus who ‘punished Macedonia with enslavement’ (Macedoniam seruitute multauit, 1.30.5). He is referring to the annexation of Macedonia, previously a nominally free state, as a province subject to a Roman governor in 148 BCE – and thus identifying the provincial condition with the state of slavery. Later Florus writes that Pompey accustomed the Armenians only to the partial slavery of accepting rulers imposed by Rome (Armenios … in hoc unum seruitutis genus Pompeius adsueuerat, ut rectores a nobis acciperent, 2.32.43). Resisting Roman conquest is represented as a struggle for freedom: the Spanish were never able to unite to defend their freedom (libertatem tueri, 1.33.3); the Belgae fought fiercely for theirs (pro libertate, 1.45.4). The Romans are a master race: Florus writes that the Latins supported the Tarquins in their attempt to return to Rome in the fifth century BCE because they wanted to see the Romans, who were masters abroad, reduced to slavery at home (ut populus qui foris dominabatur saltem domi seruiret, 1.5.1). Reflecting on the civil conflicts that followed Rome's defeat of Carthage, Florus wonders whether the Roman people might not have been better off limiting its ambitions to being master in Italy (dominans in Italia, 1.47.6). Asked by a Moesian tribe who they are, a Roman army responds ‘Romans, the masters of nations’ (Romani gentium domini, 2.26.14)’ – a boast which echoes Cicero's uobis omnium gentium dominis (‘you the masters of all peoples’, Agr. 2.22) and Virgil's Romanos, rerum dominos (‘Romans, masters of the world’, Aen. 1.282).Footnote ⁷ Florus even coins ‘the Roman mastery’ (dominatio Romana) as a synonym for the imperium Romanum in a passage I will return to below (2.14.8).

Two passages offer a particularly uncompromising vision of the experience of enslavement to Rome. Describing the long and difficult process of subduing Spain, Florus writes (1.33.8):

The Spanish at first resisted the yoke of Roman rule (impatientes iugi), but they were eventually taught to be slaves (seruire docuerunt). As often in Latin literature, the language of slavery is combined with the imagery of breaking animals to harness.Footnote ⁸ The Spanish are broken to obedience like draught animals or slaves. The fact that this is Spain – a land that is repeatedly singled out for praise by Florus and the birthplace of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian – makes the violence of the imagery all the more striking here.Footnote ⁹ Later, Florus recounts the difficulties that Augustus faced in consolidating Roman control over the northern provinces (2.21[12].2):

Again Florus combines the language of slavery (seruitus) with animalising imagery (frena, ceruices, iugum). Note the physicality and violence of the image: the yoke is forced upon them (impositum); their necks recoil from it (resilire). Of course, Florus is describing conquests which took place several centuries in his past, not the empire of his own time. Yet the language implies that slavery is the permanent condition of Rome's subjects. The northern provinces were hard to subdue because their inhabitants were ‘not yet (necdum) accustomed’ to slavery. The implication is that they are now more docile. Similarly, the implication of ‘taught them to be slaves’ (docuerunt seruire) in the previous passage is that the Spanish have now learned their lesson.

It is worth emphasising that this history of the Roman people's rise to mastery is written from a Roman perspective, not as an outsider. It is a distinctive feature of Florus’ historiographical style that the narrative regularly slips from the third person (‘the Romans’) into the first person (‘we’).Footnote ¹⁰ A few examples will suffice: ‘Under Flaminius’ command, we penetrated (penetrauimus) the hitherto impassable mountains of the Chaones, the river Aous as it passes between cliffs and the barricades of Macedonia itself’ (1.23.10). ‘The Spanish were never united in the will to rise against us’ (aduersum nos, 1.33.3). Scipio Africanus ‘made Spain a province paying tribute to us’ (stipendiariam nobis prouinciam fecit, 1.33.7) – a sentence that comes immediately before the description of the bloody work of teaching the Spanish to be slaves. ‘It was the Saluvii who first felt our arms beyond the Alps’ (arma nostra, 1.37.3). After Sulla's defeat of Mithridates, ‘Asia was again ours’ (nostra, 1.40.12). The recurring use of the pronoun nos and verbs in the first person plural express the narrator's identification with the Roman people in its conquest of the provinces.

The complex of slave metaphors in Florus’ history has gone largely uncommented – not least because the work as a whole has received so little critical attention.Footnote ¹¹ Most commentary on the politics of the text has focused on the question of whether it is best seen as a justification or critique of Hadrian's decision to abandon Trajan's conquests (the slippery text can support both readings).Footnote ¹² Relatively little attention has been given to Florus’ representation of the nature of the relationship between the Roman people and its subjects, whether in the past or in his own time. The most significant exception is Martin Hose's study, which describes Florus’ text as riven by a contradiction between an ‘imperialistic’ idea of an empire divided between rulers and subjects, represented inter alia by the language of mastery and slavery, and a unifying vision of the empire which is supposedly manifested in the metaphor ‘the body of empire’ (corpus imperii) which appears twice in a passage towards the end of the work (2.14.5 and 8).Footnote ¹³ It does seem significant that the metaphor of the body is eventually applied to the empire as a whole after it has already been used first to describe the original creation of the Roman people (1.19) and the assimilation of Alba Longa (1.1[3].9), and then to assert the essential unity of Italy at the time of the Social War (2.6.1). It is far from obvious, however, that this organic metaphor is in any way in contradiction with the metaphors of enslavement – which are in any case far more widespread and get the last word (2.21[12].2). Hose seems to assume that the idea of a ‘body of empire’ implies equality and is thus inconsistent with a distinction between rulers and subjects. Yet while the body metaphor implies indissoluble unity, it does not have to imply equality. The body too has its hierarchies.Footnote ¹⁴ Indeed Florus himself uses it as a paradigm of subjection when he says that the discovery of a human head during Tarquin's construction of the Capitoline temple was a sign that it would be the seat of empire and ‘the head of the world’ (caput terrarum, 1.1[7].9) and when he writes of the protracted conquest of Italy, ‘so difficult was it to give Italy a head’ (dare Italiae caput, 1.18[1].2). I see no contradiction between the image of the empire as a body and the repeated distinction between the Roman people and its ‘slaves’. Pace Hose, who privileges the formation of a corpus imperii, the enslavement of the provinces is the real telos of Roman expansion in Florus.Footnote ¹⁵

Florus is certainly not the first Roman historian to describe subjection to Rome as enslavement. Numerous parallels can be found in the works of Caesar, Sallust, Livy and Tacitus – and elsewhere in Latin literature.Footnote ¹⁶ Yet Florus’ short text is nevertheless remarkable for the sheer scale of its deployment of the metaphor. Only Tacitus’ Agricola can rival it for concentrated use of the language and imagery of slavery – and that is a text where slavery has a special thematic importance, providing a model for the pernicious effects of domination both in the provinces and in Domitian's Rome.Footnote ¹⁷ One explanation for Florus’ distinctiveness in this regard can be found in his personification of ‘the Roman people’, the governing trope of his work. Florus opens with the words Populus Romanus and proceeds to personify that abstraction by contrasting its achievements with its age. He then invites the reader to consider it ‘like a single man’ (quasi unum hominem, 1.praef. 4) and proceeds to trace its life cycle from infancy to youth, maturity and finally old age (1.praef. 4–8). The metaphor is continued throughout the work.Footnote ¹⁸ The recurring metaphors of enslavement work to reinforce this trope, by suggesting a personified populus Romanus enjoying personal relations with other peoples. The image is reinforced by Florus’ occasional, but equally distinctive, use of the language of patronal and familial relations.Footnote ¹⁹ Rome is the ‘mother and parent’ of Italy (matrem ac parentem, 2.6.5); Ostia is Rome's ‘client and nursling’ (cliens et alumna, 2.9.12); the Numidian kingdom is ‘in the good faith and clientage’ of the senate and people of Rome (in fide et clientela, 1.36.3). These metaphors drawn from the world of social relations represent the populus Romanus variously as mother, patron and – above all – master of its subjects and thus reinforce the trope of personification. As we will see, however, similar language in other historians of the period suggests that we might need to move beyond the internal logic of his text to a broader, cultural context in order to account for the prominence of the metaphor of enslavement.

2. Cassius DioFootnote ²⁰

Claudius Cassius Dio was born into one of the leading families of the province of Bithynia. Following in the footsteps of his consular father, he moved to Rome as a young man and was elected to the senate. He rose through the cursus honorum under Commodus and the Severan emperors, was an official amicus of some of the latter, governed the provinces of Africa, Dalmatia and Pannonia Superior, and ended his career with a prestigious second consulship as Severus Alexander's colleague in 229 CE, before retiring to his native Nicaea.Footnote ²¹ Dio's Roman History, an eighty-book work covering the history of ‘the Romans’ from the foundation of the city down to Dio's own retirement from politics in 229 CE, took him more than 22 years of work, beginning some time after the civil war of 197 CE.Footnote ²²

Dio stands out among Greek historians of Rome for his repeated use of the metaphor of enslavement in the narrative voice (as opposed to speeches attributed to Rome's enemies). Particularly characteristic is his use of the verb δουλό-ω (‘enslave’ or ‘master’) and occasionally the cognate compound καταδουλό-ω (‘reduce to slavery’) to denote conquest by Rome. Among the fragments that survive from the early books is a reference to Marcius Coriolanus as having enslaved the city of the Volsci to his fatherland (τῇ πατρίδι δουλώσας, fr. 18.2). That is the only example of the active; much more common are the aorist middle ἐδουλώσατο (‘enslaved’) and passive ἐδουλώθη (‘was enslaved’). Recording the conquest of Crete by Metellus Creticus in 67 BCE, Dio writes that ‘this is how the people of Crete – who had until then been free (ἐλεύθεροί) and had known no foreign master (δεσπότην ὀθνεῖον) – were enslaved’ (κατεδουλώθησαν, 36.19.3). Caesar's general Servius Galba enslaved the Gallic Veragri in 57 BCE (ἐδουλώσατο, 39.5.4) and Caesar himself enslaved the remaining Gallic rebels after defeating Vercingetorix at Alesia (ἐδουλώσατο, 40.42.1). (At his triumph, his soldiers joke that ‘Caesar enslaved Gaul, and Nicomedes Caesar’ (ἐδουλώσατο, 43.20.2).Footnote ²³) Meanwhile in Spain, a rebellion is suppressed by Pompey's men, but the Spanish are not yet enslaved (δουλωθῆναι, 39.54.2). Later, Pompey is criticised for turning his back on his fellow-Romans and allying himself with foreigners and peoples whom he himself had previously enslaved (ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ ποτε δουλωθεῖσι, 41.13.3). Egypt was enslaved following the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra (ἐδουλώθη, 51.17.4). In 22 BCE, the Spanish Cantabri and Astures revolted and were promptly defeated and enslaved by Augustus’ legate in Nearer Spain (ἐδουλώθησαν, 54.5.2). In 14 BCE, ‘the Maritime Alps – still then living in freedom (ἐλευθέρως ἔτι καὶ τότε νεμόμεναι) – ‘were enslaved’ (ἐδουλώθησαν, 54.24.3). Lucius Piso conquers the Thracian Bessi in 11 BCE and, after some of them revolt, ‘enslaved them again’ (αὖθις κατεδουλώσατο, 54.34.7). Towards the end of the Illyrian revolt of 6–9 CE, Germanicus enslaved a place called Arduba (ἐδουλώσατο, 56.15.1), where the women desired freedom (ἐλευθερία) and preferred anything to being slaves (δουλεῦσαι) but were betrayed by their menfolk, who preferred to surrender (56.15.2). Further examples can be found in the Byzantine history of Zonaras, who followed Dio closely and may well be echoing Dio's language.Footnote ²⁴ He writes that all Sicily except Hiero's kingdom had been enslaved by the Romans by the end of the First Punic War (ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων δεδούλωτο, Zonaras 8.17.7), that the Sardinians rebelled c. 228 BCE and ‘were again enslaved’ (αὖθις δὲ ἐδουλώθησαν, Zonaras 8.19.10) and that most of Spain ‘was again enslaved’ following the capitulation of the rebels led by Indibilis and Mardonius c. 207 BCE (αὖθις ἐδουλώθη, Zonaras 9.10.9).

One or two of these passages could be read as denoting literal enslavement, but most are clearly too sweeping in their scope. There is no question of the whole population of Crete, Gaul or Egypt ever having been enslaved. In most, and possibly all, cases the verb δουλό-ομαι is being used metaphorically to denote conquest or annexation.Footnote ²⁵ It takes its place alongside χειρό-ομαι, καταστρέφομαι, ὑπάγω and κατεργάζομαι as an integral part of the lexical field of conquest in Dio. It is worth emphasising that, while it is often used interchangeably with those verbs, it nonetheless retains its connotations of enslavement – as should be clear from those passages where the implicit metaphor is reinforced by other terms drawn from the domain of chattel slavery (see e.g. 36.19.3 and 56.15.1–2 above).

Dio employs the trope of enslavement not just to describe the forceful conquest of particular places or peoples, but also to refer to the incorporation of provinces into the Roman empire. Two passages are worth repeating: ‘Thus was Egypt enslaved’ (Αἴγυπτος μὲν οὕτως ἐδουλώθη, 51.17.4) is Dio's conclusion to his account of how Egypt was made a tributary province subject to an equestrian governor (51.17.1–3). The same trope is used of the creation of the province of Alpes Maritimae in 14 BCE: ‘The Maritime Alps … were enslaved’ (αἱ Ἄλπεις αἱ παραθαλασσίδιοι … ἐδουλώθησαν, 54.24.3). The annexation of the province of Noricum in 16 BCE is similarly described as the imposition of slavery (δουλεία, 54.20.2). Elsewhere, Dio extends the metaphor of enslavement from the moment of conquest or annexation to describe the ongoing condition of the provinces. Note the force of the perfect rather than the aorist when Dio writes that the Roman people were so impressed by Caesar's achievements in Gaul that they dispatched a senatorial delegation ‘as if the Gauls had been completely enslaved’ (ὡς καὶ ἐπὶ δεδουλωμένοις παντελῶς τοῖς Γαλάταις, 39.25.1) and says of the Parthians of his own time that they are distinguished by the fact that they (unlike other peoples) ‘have not yet been enslaved’ (μηδέπω δεδούλωνται, 40.14.4). In both cases the perfect implies that enslavement is the end result of conquest by Rome. The creation of a province is represented as a process of enslavement in Dio's narrative of the great German revolt of 9 CE. Dio explains the rebellion as the result of misjudgement on the part of the Roman governor, the hapless P. Quinctilius Varus. The Germans were being gradually transformed under Roman rule, forgetting their native customs and ‘becoming different without knowing it’. On taking over the province, Varus tried to accelerate the pace of change. ‘He imposed various other duties on them as if they were slaves (ὡς καὶ δουλεύουσι) and exacted moneys from them as if from subjects (ὡς καὶ παρ’ ὑπηκόων)’ (56.18.3). His mistake was to think they were already enslaved like Rome's other provincial subjects (regularly called ὑπηκόοι throughout the work). Varus’ behaviour provokes revolt because the Germans are unwilling to brook this ‘foreign mastery’ (ἀλλοφύλος δεσποτεία, 56.18.4). Rather than rebelling immediately, however, they lull Varus into a false sense of security by pretending ‘to be ready to be slaves even without a garrison’ (ὡς καὶ ἄνευ στρατιωτῶν δουλεύειν δυνάμενοι, 56.18.5). Varus falls for the deception and is eventually lured to his destruction at the Teutoburger Wald. The moral of the story is that the enslavement of the provinces demands patience.

I have kept to the end the three most significant examples, in which the language of slavery is employed to describe the provincial condition in the first century CE and even in Dio's own time. Dio twice uses the language of enslavement to describe the revocation of the status of ‘free state’ (ciuitas libera) – a privileged status held by a small minority of cities and peoples within the empire which brought exemption from the governor's jurisdiction, the billeting of troops and sometimes also tribute.Footnote ²⁶ Augustus revoked the freedom of Cyzicus, Tyre and Sidon as a punishment for civil unrest, reducing them to the condition of the rest of the non-Roman communities of the provinces. Claudius did the same to Lycia. In both cases, Dio writes that the emperor ‘enslaved’ the communities concerned (ἐδουλώσατο, 54.7.6 and 60.17.3). The implication is clear: the condition of the vast majority of provincial communities is one of slavery. Most striking of all is Dio's parenthetical comment on the Nabataean king Aretas, against whom Pompey campaigned in 63 BCE. Dio notes that ‘he was king of the Arabs, who are now slaves to the Romans (Ἀραβίων μὲν τῶν νῦν τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις δουλευόντων), as far as the Red Sea’ (37.15.1). Here the metaphor of slavery is applied not to the past, but explicitly to Dio's present and to a province that had been subject to direct Roman rule for more than a century (following the annexation of the kingdom of Nabataea as Arabia Provincia in 105/6 CE).Footnote ²⁷ Lest there be any doubt about the connotations of the verb δουλεύειν, it is worth noting that Dio regularly uses it to denote the condition of chattel slavery.Footnote ²⁸

Dio's repeated use of the language of enslavement to describe the conquest and subjection of the provinces has received little or no critical attention. The handful of exceptions have focused on particular instances and failed to see the overall pattern. Discussing Dio's attitude to the Greek-speaking world, G. J. D. Aalders drew attention to Zonaras’ statement that ‘this is how Sicily was enslaved by the Romans’ (Σικελία μὲν οὖν οὕτως ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων δεδούλωτο, Zonaras 8.17.7) and concluded that ‘Dio was critical of the harsh way in which the Sicilian Greeks were subjected to Roman rule after the First Punic war’ (implying, not implausibly, that Zonaras was here echoing Dio's language).Footnote ²⁹ Meyer Reinhold noted the reference to Egypt being enslaved in 30 BCE (Αἴγυπτος μὲν οὕτως ἐδουλώθη, 51.17.4) and suggested that ‘the term “enslaved” reveals Dio's understanding of the harsh administration imposed on Egypt’.Footnote ³⁰ Both comments ignore the ubiquity of the language of slavery in Dio's description of Roman rule. There is nothing exceptional in Dio's description of the annexation of either Sicily or Egypt. The language of enslavement is an integral part of his terminology of conquest and control.

The recurring metaphors of provincial enslavement in the narrative voice are all the more marked given the thematic importance of slavery elsewhere in Dio's work. I will discuss his references to the enslavement of the Roman people in the third part of this paper. For now it is enough to note that, like other Greek and Latin historians, Dio represents the trope of enslavement as having an emotive force in the perception of Rome's provincial subjects. Dio's Boudicca, for example, incites her fellow Britons to choose freedom over slavery to Rome (62[62].3.1, 4.3 and 6.5.). Elsewhere Dio suggests that the non-Romans who fought in the civil war between Caesar and Pompey fought as fiercely for the enslavement (δουλεία) of the Romans (i.e. to whichever commander proved victorious) as they had for their own freedom because, ‘being held inferior to the Romans in all respects, they desired to have them as fellow-slaves (ὁμοδούλοι)’ (41.59.4). It is presumably in this context that the famous speech of Maecenas advises against treating the empire's subjects as slaves. The bulk of Book 52 of Dio's History is devoted to a pair of speeches in which Agrippa and Maecenas advise Octavian on whether or not he should restore power to the senate and people. Agrippa (52.2–13) warns of the dangers of monarchy and recommends that Augustus restore democracy. Maecenas (52.14–40) then argues in favour of establishing a monarchy and proceeds to map out a detailed blueprint for stable imperial rule (much of which is more relevant to Dio's own time than the notional context of 29 BCE).Footnote ³¹ Among other recommendations, he proposes that the emperor should recruit senators and equestrians from the best men of all the provinces. By so doing, he says, ‘you will persuade the subjects (οἱ ἀρχόμενοι) that you are not treating them as slaves (ὡς δούλοις) or in any way inferior to us’. In other words, Dio's ‘Maecenas’ thinks it is important that the population of the provinces be reassured that they are not regarded as slaves. Yet Roman speakers in Dio repeatedly insist that the inhabitants of the provinces are indeed their slaves. Caesar, speaking to his officers at Vesontio, reminds them of Rome's greatness, reciting the long list of peoples of whom they are master (δεσπόζομεν, 38.38.4). Speaking over Caesar's corpse, Antony reminds the Roman people that it was thanks to Caesar that ‘Gaul too has now been enslaved’ (καὶ νῦν δεδούλωται μὲν Γαλατία, 44.42.4). Augustus boasts to the senate of ‘the enslavement of Pannonia’ (τὴν Παννονίας δούλωσιν, 53.7.1). Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, governor of Britannia at the time of Boudicca's revolt in 60 CE, delivers a speech before the decisive battle in which he assures his men that he is confident of victory because of the favour of the gods, their ancestral courage, their experience – and their honour (ἀξίωμα), ‘for we are fighting not against equal adversaries but against our slaves (δούλοις ἡμετέροις), whom we defeated even when they were free and independent’ (62[62].11.3). Paulinus exhorts his Roman troops to think of the provincials as slaves and to assume that they will be even easier to defeat as slaves than they were when they were free (drawing on a discourse of slavery in which it is assumed that slaves are morally and physically inferior to the free).Footnote ³² It is striking that the narrator's repeated use of language of slavery aligns him with the masterly rhetoric of Paulinus and other Roman speakers – and not with Maecenas.Footnote ³³

The language of enslavement takes on further significance when placed in the context of the Greek historiographical tradition. Though the trope of describing foreign (and especially Persian) rule as enslavement goes back to Herodotus and Thucydides, no earlier Greek historian of Rome makes such extensive use of the trope of enslavement in describing Roman expansion or the condition of the provinces. Denunciations of enslavement to Rome can certainly be found in embedded speeches attributed to Rome's enemies, but such language is hardly ever found in the rhetoric of Roman speakers or in the narrative voice as it is in Dio.Footnote ³⁴ Taken together, the texts of Polybius, Diodorus, Dionysius and Appian can offer only a handful of examples. Polybius says that Rome's constitution is superior to Sparta's for those who value ‘being rulers and masters (ἐπικρατεῖν καὶ δεσπόζειν) of many peoples’ (6.50.3).Footnote ³⁵ In his account of the battle of the Ticinus in the Second Punic War, he gives P. Scipio (the father of Africanus) a speech in which he exhorts his men to have no fear of the Carthaginians since they have long been ‘all but their slaves’ (μόνον δ’ οὐχὶ δουλεύοντες αὐτοῖς, Plb. 3.64.4). The ‘all but’ is an important qualification: Dio's Paulinus goes much further in insisting that the Britons are indeed slaves and using the concrete noun δοῦλοι rather than the verb δουλεύειν (62.11.3, discussed above). Diodorus Siculus says that the defeat of the Achaean League in 146 BCE deprived the Greeks of their freedom (ἐλευθερία, 32.26.2), implying that they are now slaves – though he never says so outright.Footnote ³⁶ Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in the preface to his Roman Antiquities, writes that ‘from the very beginning, from its foundation, [the city of Rome] attached to itself the neighbouring peoples, which were many and warlike, and continuously advanced, enslaving every rival (πᾶν δουλουμένη τὸ ἀντίπαλον, 1.3.4). It is particularly striking that Appian manages to narrate Rome's conquests of all the peoples around the Mediterranean without once using the trope of enslavement in the narrative voice.Footnote ³⁷

Of all earlier Greek historians, only Josephus comes close to Dio. In his Jewish War, subjection to Rome is described as enslavement in speeches attributed to the Jewish king Agrippa II (who, like Josephus himself, seeks to dissuade his fellow Jews from revolt) and also to the future emperor Titus. Agrippa warns the Jews of the folly of rebellion given that the Athenians, Gauls and Germans are slaves to the Romans (δουλεύουσιν, 2.358, 373 and 377), the Spartans tolerate the same masters (δεσπότας, 359) and the Romans have enslaved the Spanish and the Britons (ἐδουλώσαντο, 375 and 378); only the Jews cannot bear being slaves to the rulers of all (δουλεύειν οἷς ὑποτέτακται τὰ πάντα, 361). Later, the emperor Titus calls on the rebels in Jerusalem to surrender, reminding them of the futility of resistance when even the powerful Germans are their slaves (δουλεύοντας ἡμῖν, 6.331) and assuring them that he will treat them like a ‘gentle master’ (πρᾷος δεσπότης, 6.350). Elsewhere, he assures his own soldiers that the Jews have already learnt to be slaves (δουλεύειν), and so will be easily defeated (6.42). The trope of enslavement is also ubiquitous in the rhetoric of Jewish rebels, but it is never once endorsed by the narrator: it belongs in represented speech, not the narrative proper. In any case, Josephus’ hybrid text is an outlier in the Greek historiographical tradition and I have suggested elsewhere that the speeches of Agrippa and Titus are perhaps best understood in the context of a characteristically Jewish conception of slavery as the paradigm for human submission to god, which works to align Roman power with divine authority.Footnote ³⁸ The key point is that what survives of earlier Greek historiography offers nothing comparable to the recurring tropes of enslavement in Dio's narrative of Roman expansion.

Dio's use of the verb δουλό-ω seems particularly significant. Few of his predecessors use it on the same scale in any context. It is notably more common in Dio (15.0 occurrences per 100,000 words) than in any other surviving Greek historian of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Contrast Arrian (6.5), Dionysius of Halicarnassus (4.2), Josephus (3.8), Appian (1.3), Diodorus Siculus (1.3) and Polybius (0.0).Footnote ³⁹ Dio alone accounts for 57 per cent of all the occurrences of the verb in all these historians. His preference for δουλό-ω recalls the usage of Thucydides, who is the only historian to use it more frequently (19.3) – compare Herodotus (6.5) and Xenophon (1.3). Thucydides’ importance as a model for Dio has long been acknowledged. His influence can be seen in Dio's language and style, in his construction of narrative episodes, characters and speeches and in his very conception of the historical project – notably in the importance he attributes to a pessimistic vision of human nature and his determination to expose the autocratic reality that lay beneath the republican rhetoric of the Augustan principate.Footnote ⁴⁰ Dio's use of the verb δουλό-ω – particularly to describe the conquest and control of the provinces – must be a further example of this Thucydidean project. As any reader will recall, Thucydides’ history abounds in claims that it is not just the Persians but also his fellow Athenians who seek to enslave the Greek cities, and that the Athenians’ ‘allies’ are really their slaves.Footnote ⁴¹ Like Thucydides, Dio writes as a leading citizen of an imperial people who chooses to strip away the obfuscating rhetoric to reveal what he sees as the real power relations between that imperial people and its subjects. But there is an important difference. In Thucydides, the language of slavery, though widespread, is almost entirely limited to reported speech and representations of the thoughts or intentions of participants (usually Athens’ enemies, though it is occasionally attributed to Athenian speakers).Footnote ⁴² In all of Thucydides, there are at most five instances where the trope of enslavement appears in the narrative proper, and only two of these refer to the Athenians (1.98.4, 7.75.7); the other three concern cases of subjection in early Greek history (1.8.3), the Persian conquest of the Ionian islands (1.16) and the subjection of the Messenians to the Spartans (1.101.2).Footnote ⁴³ It may be that the two instances in which the narrator does endorse the metaphor of enslavement to Athens have a particular purpose. The first arises in the context of Naxos’ attempt to break from the Delian League and its subsequent conquest by Athens: Thucydides says that this was the first allied city to be enslaved contrary to custom (ἐδουλώθη, 1.98.4).Footnote ⁴⁴ The second follows the defeat of the Athenian expedition to Sicily at Syracuse, with Thucydides noting the irony that instead of coming to enslave others (δουλωσομένους) the Athenians were leaving in fear of suffering the same fate themselves (7.75.7). It is striking that the two tropes frame the period of Athenian expansion: the first marks Athens’ first significant encroachment on the autonomy of its allies and the second comes just after the defeat at Syracuse has marked the end of Athens’ imperial ambitions. The uncharacteristic use of the coloured language of enslavement at these two points in the narrative works nicely to frame them as pivotal moments in the history of Athens’ imperial ambitions. In any case, it should be clear that by using δουλό-ω and its cognates so widely in his narrative of Roman expansion, Dio is not just appropriating a Thucydidean perspective on empire but also going one step further than his predecessor in fully endorsing the identification of empire with enslavement.

There is a further complication in that the immediate antecedents of Dio's metaphors of enslavement are to be found in Latin, not Greek historiography. Though there is no direct equivalent in Latin to the Greek δουλό-ομαι (to denote the act of enslavement Latin must use a periphrastic construction with seruitus or seruus), the broader language of mastery and slavery has a long pedigree in Roman representations of empire. Dio's representation of Roman conquest as enslavement has ample precedent in the writings of Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus and Pliny (among others).Footnote ⁴⁵ He could thus be seen as situating himself in a long tradition of Roman, and especially senatorial, historians and writers who represent themselves as masters of the world and describe the condition of some or all of their provincial subjects in terms of enslavement.Footnote ⁴⁶

This raises the thorny question of the degree to which Dio identifies with the Roman imperial project whose trajectory he traces from the foundation of the city to his present.Footnote ⁴⁷ His decision to write in Greek rather than Latin, his idealisation of Greek paideia and his attachment to Bithynia all complicate the cultural politics of his work.Footnote ⁴⁸ He writes of ‘the Romans’ in the third person throughout the work, but he refers to ‘the Greeks’ in exactly the same way – thus locating his narrative voice somewhere above or beyond the Greek/Roman dichotomy.Footnote ⁴⁹ The narrator does, however, occasionally use the first person plural within his narrative, enmeshing himself in a complex and shifting web of affiliations – with the inhabitants of his native province of Bithynia (we still remember a particularly just and prudent governor, ἡμᾶς … μνημονεύειν, 69.14.4 Xiph) but also with the inhabitants of Italy (this land which we inhabit, κατοικοῦμεν, fr. 1.13) and Rome (we still take pride in the theatre built by Pompey, λαμπρυνόμεθα, 39.38.1) and – most frequently – with the Roman senate of his own time, which he regularly refers to as ‘us’ in the books covering contemporary history (note also the much earlier observation on the distinction between ordinary and suffect consuls where the use of the first person plural reminds the reader that the narrator was a consul himself, 43.46.6).Footnote ⁵⁰ It is signficant that all but the first of these align the narrator with the centre and the ruling power. Particularly striking are a few passages where he unambiguously identifies with the project of conquering and holding the provinces. In a digression on the ethnography and geography of Britain he notes that ‘of this territory we hold a little less than half’ (τούτων ἡμεῖς οὐ πολλῷ τινι τῆς ἡμισείας ἔλάττον τι ἔχομεν, 77[76].12.5). He closes his history on an ominous note by noting the rise of the Sasanian King of Kings Artaxerxes (Ardashir I) and his designs on Rome's eastern provinces, which made him ever more ‘threatening to us’ (φοβερὸς ἡμῖν, 80[80].3.4) – the threat being compounded by the laxity of ‘our armies’ (τὰ στρατιωτικὰ ἡμῖν, ibid.). In any case, the author of the Roman History was assuredly no outsider. Dio must have been among the wealthiest and most powerful men of his time: he was a Roman senator, consular and adviser to emperors; over the course of his career he governed three provinces, including one major military command (Pannonia Superior with its two legions).Footnote ⁵¹ He may be appropriating a Thucydidean perspective on power which makes a point of avoiding rhetorical subterfuge, but in doing so he is also aligning himself with the masterly style espoused by many earlier Latin writers. Like Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus and Pliny before him, Dio is a Roman senator who writes as one of the masters of the world.

3. Contexts

Florus and Dio each have their own reasons for using the metaphor of enslavement, but the coincidence is nonetheless striking. Here are two historians writing at a time of political and cultural integration who choose to break from their predecessors in representing the formation of the empire as a process of enslavement. The difference is only one of degree in the case of Florus, who uses the trope of enslavement more intensively than any earlier Roman author. But it is certainly a difference of kind in the case of Dio, whose use of δουλό-ω and its cognates is almost unprecedented in the Greek historiography of Roman expansion. Moreover, there are enough parallels in other texts from this period to suggest a broader phenomenon. Is it mere coincidence that the only classical parallel for Florus’ reference to the dominatio Romana (‘Roman mastery’) is in another author of the late second century, the Christian Tertullian? His Apologeticum, a text addressed to the governors and administrators of the empire (Apol. 1.1 and 50.12) and written in 197 CE or shortly after, describes the empire as dominatio uestra: ‘if in our vast numbers we [Christians] had broken away from you for some far-off corner of the world, the loss of so many citizens – whatever their condition – would have put your mastery to the blush’ (Apol. 37.6).Footnote ⁵² Dio's reference to ‘the Arabs who are now slaves to the Romans’ (Ἀραβίων μὲν τῶν νῦν τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις δουλευόντων, 37.15.1) is echoed shortly later by the Greek historian Herodian, whose History of the Empire from the Death of Marcus, covering the years 180 to 238, was written some time between the 240s and 260s.Footnote ⁵³ Describing Septimius Severus’ efforts to secure support for his bid for power, Herodian says that he wrote ‘to all the rulers of the peoples who were slaves to the Romans (τῶν Ῥωμαίοις δουλευόντων ἐθνῶν) in the North’ – meaning that he wrote to the governors of the Rhine and Danubian provinces (2.9.12). This vision of an empire divided between ‘Romans’ and their provincial slaves is very similar to that of Florus and Dio – and all the more remarkable, coming as it does several decades after Caracalla's universal grant of citizenship. Elsewhere, Herodian says of Parthian deserters and captives who served in the Roman army on the Danube that ‘they were slaves to the Romans’ (Ῥωμαίοις ἐδούλευον, 7.2.1) and writes that the Greeks’ interminable feuding eroded their power and left them ‘easy victims for the Macedonians and slaves (δοῦλα) for the Romans’ (3.2.8). The latter passage, at least, has been noted.Footnote ⁵⁴ But no one has yet put it in the context of the similar metaphors in Cassius Dio and Latin historiography.

A third parallel can be found in Justin's Epitome of Trogus, which reworks the Philippica of Pompeius Trogus, a universal history of the Greek world written in Latin during the reign of Augustus. The language and imagery of slavery are ubiquitous in Justin's description of imperial powers from Assyria to Rome. Subjection to foreign rule is repeatedly described as seruitus (enslavement) and the loss of libertas (freedom); imperial power is dominatio (mastery).Footnote ⁵⁵ Particularly striking are the repeated references to the iugum seruitutis (yoke of slavery). Philip II forces Macedonian rule like the yoke of slavery on the necks of Greece and Asia (ceruicibus ueluti iugum seruitutis inponeret, 6.9.7). The Persians accept the yoke of slavery (iugum seruitutis, 11.14.7) under Alexander. After Alexander's death, India shakes the yoke of slavery from its neck (ceruicibus iugo seruitutis excusso, 15.4.12). Philip V of Macedon objects to being dictated to by Greeks who had once been forced beneath the yoke of Macedonian rule (sub iugum Macedonici imperii subactos, 30.3.9). He goes on to say that they should be submitting the accounts of their time as slaves before claiming their freedom (quibus prius sit seruitutis ratio reddenda quam libertas uindicanda, 30.3.9). (Before being manumitted, slaves were normally expected to render a detailed account (rationes reddere) of any funds they managed on behalf their master (their peculium) and return the balance.Footnote ⁵⁶) Rome's empire, when it finally appears at the end of the work, is no different (Just. 44.5.8):

As in Florus, Roman rule is a yoke (iugum) imposed on the provinces.

I do not wish to place too much weight on this problematic text. We cannot be certain that these tropes are Justin's rather than Trogus’ – though it is clear that Justin is not merely repeating Trogus verbatim.Footnote ⁵⁷ Even the date is obscure. Most estimates have placed it in the late second or early third centuries, but the evidence is limited.Footnote ⁵⁸ The most significant detail is that Justin introduces the ethnography of the Parthians with the remark that the Parthian empire ‘now’ shares the world with the Roman empire (41.1.1). This would be odd in a text written after the displacement of the Arsacid Parthians by the Sasanian Persians in the 220s. But it is far from conclusive. An iconoclastic paper by Ronald Syme has drawn attention to some distinctive vocabulary (stagare, adtaminare and aduncare) to argue for a much later date, around 390 CE.Footnote ⁵⁹ For present purposes, it is enough to register the possibility that it was written in my period and that Florus is not alone in using the language of enslavement more extensively than earlier Latin historians. Taken together, these texts are some indication that metaphors of Roman mastery and provincial enslavement proved particularly productive for at least some writers in the late second and third centuries CE. This raises the question of whether there were any broader cultural developments in this period that might lie behind this surprising phenomenon.

One possibility can be dismissed at once. There is no question of some more humanitarian vision of slavery having changed the connotations of the trope of enslavement in this period. Some scholars have seen signs of a ‘changed social consciousness towards slavery’ in the first and second centuries CE – notably in changes in the law of slavery and in the relatively enlightened views on slaves expressed by Seneca and the younger Pliny.Footnote ⁶⁰ It is certainly true that imperial enactments made increasing encroachments on the traditionally private world of master and slave. The master's traditional power of life and death over his slave was curbed by growing restrictions on the extrajudicial killing of slaves. Mechanisms were created to allow slaves to seek protection from harsh masters (if only by forcing the master to sell them to someone else). On the principle of fauor libertatis, judgments were increasingly made in favour of slaves when there was any dispute about their status (as might happen when proper form had not been observed in manumission). These interventions begin in the Julio-Claudian period and reach a peak under Hadrian and Antoninus Pius.Footnote ⁶¹ But they do not necessarily reflect any new concern for the welfare of slaves among the élite. From what survives of the preambles to, and commentary on, these enactments, they seem to have been motivated by enlightened self-interest (worries that the abuses of a few might jeopardise the whole community's fragile control of its slaves by provoking a slave revolt) rather than concern for the welfare of slaves as an end in itself.Footnote ⁶² In other respects – notably the responses to the murder of a master by a slave – the law of slavery became harsher, not more lenient, under the emperors.Footnote ⁶³ As for the exhortations to be a good master that can be found in Seneca and Pliny, a careful reading shows that these are motivated not just by a Stoic appeal to a common humanity, but also by an equally Stoic pre-occupation with the importance of self-restraint.Footnote ⁶⁴ In short, the evidence for any fundamental change in the culture of slavery is very thin. In any case, it should be obvious that the metaphors of enslavement discussed here – notably Florus’ images of slaves broken to service like beasts to the harness – do not embody any new, milder vision of slavery.

A more promising line of enquiry is the evidence for a broader shift in the language of public discourse that might have given a new salience to mastery as a paradigm of power. These authors were writing in precisely the period in which dominus (‘master’) was establishing itself as one of the emperor's conventional epithets at all levels of political discourse. It was this use of dominus that provided both the terminology and the yardstick for Mommsen's theory of an evolution from ‘principate’ to ‘dominate’.Footnote ⁶⁵ His schematic model of two juridically distinct systems has proved unhelpful, obscuring the many continuities in the political culture of the empire.Footnote ⁶⁶ But his observations about the expanding use of dominus remain sound. The masterly style has a long and complex history in the Roman monarchy. For the first emperors, the ostentatious rejection of the title dominus with its masterly connotations was an integral part of the image of the citizen princeps, the founding myth of the Augustan regime. Augustus issued an edict banning the use of dominus and Tiberius followed his lead, refusing to allow anyone except his slaves to refer to him as ‘master’.Footnote ⁶⁷ But there was from the beginning an impulse to see the emperor as a master figure. Augustus’ edict was provoked when he was spontaneously hailed as ‘the good master’ (o dominum aequum) in the theatre.Footnote ⁶⁸ Both Gaius and Domitian seem to have embraced the title dominus as part of their experiments in a more autocratic style.Footnote ⁶⁹ At the beginning of the second century we find the younger Pliny praising Trajan for rejecting Domitian's masterly style – ‘we talk not of a master, but of a parent’ (non de domino, sed de parente loquimur, Pan. 2.3) – yet later addressing Trajan as domine throughout the tenth book of his letters. Our understanding of the significance of this mode of address is complicated by a development over the course of the first century CE which saw the vocative domine become a polite and respectful form of address used in a wide range of social contexts (and a related but distinct development by which dominus became a common epithet appended to ‘father’, ‘brother’, and even ‘son’ when referring to family members).Footnote ⁷⁰ Eleanor Dickey explains Pliny's apparently contradictory use of domine as reflecting the divergence of the address use of domine from the referential use of dominus in this period (which she compares to English Mr and master and German Herr and der Herr).Footnote ⁷¹ For Carlos Noreña, the use of domine is, counter-intuitively, a mark of intimacy – a deliberate deployment of the language of ‘private’ and ‘domestic’ relations which serves ‘to construct Trajan as a person with whom [Pliny] had social relations in non-public contexts’.Footnote ⁷² These explanations, which seek to evacuate Pliny's language of any suggestion of servility, would be more convincing if Pliny had addressed even one of his other correspondents as domine (he does not) or if Trajan had returned the compliment (instead he addresses Pliny more familiarly as mi Secunde carissime). At the very least, Pliny's letters show that Trajan was much less concerned than either Augustus or Tiberius to avoid any hint of a masterly style.

The second century saw more dramatic changes. As early as the second decade, a recruit writing to the Prefect of Egypt refers to Trajan as ‘our master’ (dominus noster).Footnote ⁷³ In what appears to be the script for a dramatic performance at Alexandria celebrating the accession of Hadrian, the god Apollo hails the new emperor ‘to whom all things are gladly slaves (ὧ πάντα δοῦλα … χαίροντες)’.Footnote ⁷⁴ The language of mastery begins to appear in Latin epigraphy in the middle of the century. Hadrian is styled dominus noster in the will of an imperial freedman from Nacolea in Phrygia (ILS 7196) and on a bilingual votive altar which an Egyptian cavalry prefect erected in Thebes (ILS 8908). Even senators begin to refer to the emperor as ‘master’. Antoninus Pius is dominus noster in a letter written by the pontifex Velius Fidus to his colleague Iuventius Celsus (ILS 8380) and dominus imperator on a statue base dedicated by a senatorial legate in Numidia (AE 1968 585). The letters of Fronto, written under Pius and the dual principate of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, use dominus much more widely than the earlier letters of Pliny. Fronto not only addresses the emperors as domine (a courtesy he also extends to family and a few friends) but also opens many of his letters to them with the salutatio ‘to my master’ (domino meo), where Pliny wrote simply C. Plinius Traiano imperatori. When writing of other members of the imperial family, he styles them ‘my master your father’ (writing to Marcus about Pius), ‘my master your brother’ (writing to Verus about Marcus), etc.Footnote ⁷⁵ Even in letters to friends outside the imperial family, he refers to the emperor(s) as ‘our master(s)’ (dominus noster, domini nostri).Footnote ⁷⁶ The end of the century sees the further consolidation of this language, as references to the emperor as ‘master’ in the epigraphic record proliferate under Commodus and, especially, Septimius Severus – though the emperors still do not style themselves dominus in their own pronouncements.Footnote ⁷⁷ This tendency to represent the emperor as master must have had an impact on the broader Roman discourse of power in the second and third centuries. Centuries of rule by the emperors had made the Roman monarchy one of the most important paradigms of power throughout the Roman world. Clifford Ando has shown that Roman imperial institutions provide Christian authors such as Tertullian, John Chrysostom and Severianus with the language and imagery with which they describe divine power.Footnote ⁷⁸ In an era which increasingly referred to the emperor as master, it would not be surprising if self-professed Romans emphasised their own identity as masters of the world.

Some support for this hypothesis can be found in the clear parallels between monarchy and territorial empire in both Florus and Dio. In Florus, the enslavement of the provinces by the Roman people is mirrored by the enslavement of the Roman people by the emperors. Having narrated Roman expansion down to the time of Caesar and Pompey (1.1–46), Florus turns to the ‘domestic disturbances’ (domestici motus, 1.47.14) from the Gracchi to the triumvirs (1.47–2.21[11]). One of the driving forces, he says, was the ‘desire for primacy and mastery’ (principatus et dominandi cupido, 1.47.13). The motif of mastery (dominatio) appears again and again in the ensuing narrative of seditions and civil wars.Footnote ⁷⁹ When the narrative finally reaches the deaths of Pompey and Caesar, Florus writes that the Roman people might have returned to their ancient freedom (libertas, 2.14.1) – had it not been for Sextus Pompeius, Octavian and especially Antony (2.14.1–4). In the end, ‘[the Roman people's] only salvation was to take refuge in slavery’ (aliter saluus esse non potuit, nisi confugisset ad seruitutem, 2.14.4).Footnote ⁸⁰ Florus says that it was fortunate that it was Octavian who prevailed, as he proved capable of restoring order to the empire (2.14.5–6) – but the implication is that he was nonetheless a master. Florus goes on to compare the conflict between Octavian, Antony and Sextus Pompeius to the vast movements of the heavens (2.14.7–8):

Romanae dominationis conuersio is a striking and difficult phrase. Forster's Loeb (1929) translates it as ‘the change that came over the Roman dominion’. But on the analogy of the rotation of the heavens (conuersione caeli) in the first clause, it should mean a movement of the dominatio Romana (not just change within it). In this case, dominatio Romana ought to be the autocratic power that passed between Caesar, Antony, Sextus Pompeius and Augustus as they struggled over it – which invites a reading of the genitive as objective (mastery over Rome) as well as subjective (Rome's mastery). Jal's Budé (1967) brings out the sense of power over Rome (‘la révolution alors opérée dans le gouvernement de Rome’), though at the price of collapsing the ambiguity implicit in the use of the adjective (and ‘gouvernement’ also obscures the force of dominatio). In any case, the ambiguities of the expression nicely illustrate the slippage between the masterly power of the autocrat and that of the Roman people within Florus’ work.Footnote ⁸¹

The relationship between territorial empire and monarchy is more complex in Dio's history. Dio represents the traditional republican system (which he calls demokratia) as unsustainable in an imperial state and inevitably giving way in the late republic to the short-lived domination of successive factions and individuals (dunasteiai). Only monarchy could bring stability and order.Footnote ⁸² Like Florus, Dio represents autocracy as the enslavement of the Roman people. When Caesar and Pompey came to blows it was clear to everyone that the city of Rome and its whole empire would be enslaved to the victor (δουλωθήσεται, 41.56.1; cf. 41.59.4). In the wars that followed Caesar's assassination, everyone sought the establishment of a dunasteia – some to see whose slaves they would be (ὅτῳ δουλεύσουσιν), others to see which of them would be master (ὅστις αὐτῶν δεσπόσει, 46.34.4; cf. 46.32.2 and 46.48.1). Cassius and Brutus, though genuine in their concern for the Roman people, were misguided in trying to re-establish demokratia, because their victory would inevitably have led to further civil wars and the Roman people would eventually have been either enslaved or destroyed (πάντως ἄν ποτε ἐδουλώθησαν ἢ καὶ ἐφθάρησαν, 47.39.5). With Octavian's victory over Antony in 33 BCE, ‘the people was truly enslaved’ (ὁ δῆμος ἀκριβῶς ἐδουλώθη, 50.1.2). Yet, in a surprising reversal, Dio subsequently insists in his retrospective assessment of Augustus that the monarchical system he established represented a synthesis of monarchic and ‘democratic’ elements and that the Roman people were ‘ruled by a monarch without being enslaved’ (βασιλευόμενοι ἄνευ δουλείας, 56.43.4). It is not clear how much significance we should grant to this idealising passage which sits uneasily with the much more cynical description of the Augustan principate elsewhere in the text. Nowhere else is there any hint of the mixed constitution mentioned here. On the contrary, Dio repeatedly insists that the Augustan principate was a true monarchy masked by a republican façade.Footnote ⁸³ The claim about the absence of slavery is equally incongruous given the unambiguous earlier statements about enslavement and further hints, in what survives of the later books, that the emperors’ Roman subjects are indeed their slaves.Footnote ⁸⁴ On the other hand, if we do take a strong reading of this one passage, the metaphors of provincial enslavement are all the more significant: the narrative insists that the Roman people are not slaves to the emperor, and yet continues to describe the Arabs and other provincials as slaves to the Romans.

A third possible context for the apparent vitality of the trope of provincial enslavement in this period is the ongoing transformation of the geography of power and privilege in the empire. The most dramatic development was the extension of Roman citizenship (which had been denied to the Italians as recently as 91 BCE) to increasing numbers of provincials, culminating in Caracalla's universal grant of 212 CE.Footnote ⁸⁵ This effectively erased the only clear basis for a distinction between Romans and subjects within the empire. One of the interesting features of the texts discussed here is that they seem to deny this process of political integration. Florus wrote under Hadrian or the Antonines, well into what Sherwin-White called the ‘flood tide’ of enfranchisement.Footnote ⁸⁶ Yet he insists on the distinction between Romans and subjects and identifies ongoing Roman rule with the yoke of slavery. So too does Dio, though he wrote some or all of his history after Caracalla's grant.Footnote ⁸⁷ Even Herodian – certainly writing several decades after Caracalla's edict – asserts the same dichotomy between ‘the Romans’ and their provincial ‘slaves’.Footnote ⁸⁸ Seen in isolation, Herodian's representation of Roman rule as enslavement might well appear to be the subversive trope of an outsider.Footnote ⁸⁹ Despite having pursued a career in the imperial administration, Herodian only ever refers to ‘the Romans’ in the third person and never represents himself as a Roman in his work.Footnote ⁹⁰ But it must be significant that the trope of enslavement to Rome is used even more extensively by Florus and Dio, both of whom do identify with the imperial power. If there is a new emphasis on Roman mastery in this period, it seems to emerge from the centre, not the periphery. It is perhaps a sign that at least some men who saw themselves as part of an imperial élite responded to the integrative processes at work in the second and third centuries with a heightened exclusivism, insisting on the distinction between Romans and subjects and using the paradigm of slavery to emphasise the gulf between them.Footnote ⁹¹ The evidence may be limited, but it is important because so few Latin texts survive from the period which saw the completion of the process of enfranchisement, in contrast to the rich evidence for the early second and fourth centuries. These histories suggest that the ecumenical implications of the process of enfranchisement may not have been endorsed by all.